Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2017 00:26:47 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: fbsdq@juicer.orange-carb.org (Colin Henein) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Modernizing freebsd-update or moving to source upgrades Message-ID: <20171106002647.db7be6d4.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20171105141148.2041.qmail@secure.orange-carb.org> References: <20171105141148.2041.qmail@secure.orange-carb.org>
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On Sun, 5 Nov 2017 09:11:48 -0500 (EST), Colin Henein wrote: > With the new EOL policy, people will need to be upgrading a lot more > than before, and I am wondering if there are plans to improve or > replace the freebsd-update utility with something more modern. This will soon be pkg's task. If I understand the ongoing development correctly, pkg will also manage the base (i. e., the OS) components which will then be thought of as packages, too. > I have enjoyed using freebsd for almost 20 years. I was delighted when > freebsd-update first came out, but have found many challenges using > it. It works fine for within-release upgrades and pretty well for > minor-point releases, but I have twice had catastrophic failures when > upgrading across a major release boundary that could not be downgraded > using the tool. This makes me extremely nervous to run > freebsd-upgrade. For the common security upgrades, freebsd-update is very convenient. > Aside from catastrophic failures, the system provided for "merging" > configuration files is one that only a robot could love. Tens to > hundreds of files to merge (frequently the code intended to prevent > version numbers from needing to be merged does not work, especially if > freebsd-update has been used to perform upgrades more than once, > especially multiple major upgrades). If any error is made in this > delicate process it is impossible to go back and fix a file that has > already been saved. No warning if any merge tag is missed, and merge > characters can easily be saved into (and break) critical files. Configuration files are the things you still need to _really_ pay attention to. Sometimes, new system facilities are added, others are abolished, and things like /etc/passwd or /etc/ttys need to reflect those changes. Of course, a system administrator probably has lots of his own changes to those files, to properly (!) merging is needed. > I certainly appreciate the work of the original developer in creating > the tool, but if the community is moving to more frequent updates > then I would suggest that this tool needs to be revisited to improve > usability and safety. > > If this tool is not going to be updated soon, then I think I need to > move to updating fbsd from source. This doesn't free you from the task of caring for those changes (usually in system configuration files). > QUESTION: Do I need to do anything special to change over to updating > fbsd from source if I have been using freebsd-update in the past? I > see the instructions at section 23.5 of the handbook. Can I just check > out a new source tree with SVN from the 11.1 repository and follow > the steps to overwrite 11.0 with 11.1? Very much appreciate any tips, > especially on merging files in etc. Just pay attention to /usr/src/Makefile's comment header which shows the correct updating and installation procedure. When if builds, it usually installs. Make a backup (as always). But: No, nothing special is needed to perform updates from source. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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