From owner-freebsd-stable Tue Feb 6 20:27: 2 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from hal9000.bsdonline.org (ffaxvawx3-4-047.cox.rr.com [24.168.203.47]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CC0C37B4EC for ; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 20:26:43 -0800 (PST) Received: by hal9000.bsdonline.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 103011FBB; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:26:40 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:26:40 -0500 From: Andrew J Caines To: FreeBSD Stable Subject: Automating STABLE updates - update_stable and install_stable Message-ID: <20010206232640.E18191@hal9000.bsdonline.org> Reply-To: Andrew J Caines Mail-Followup-To: FreeBSD Stable Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Organization: H.A.L. Plant X-Powered-by: FreeBSD 4.2-STABLE Importance: Normal Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Folks, Reinventing wheels is a great way to get better wheels, even if it does result in quite a bit of duplication of effort. To save a bit of effort with others' and help me improve mine, I'm soliciting opinions of the scripts I use to update update my FreeBSD boxes. The scripts are available from the "Software" section of my "Systems" page: or directly from I'm happy to mail them to anyone without web access. The update_stable script does the safe stuff - cvsup (src and ports), buildword and buildkernel. I run it periodically from cron whether or not I intend to do an install. The install_stable does the installworld based on the last update_stable build, whenever that was. None of these scripts do anything clever, but they help organise logging by saving logs of each step to named and dated log files an using syslog for "status" messages. This makes it easy to answer question like "What was updated since the last build?" or "Where did the build fail and how does this compare to last time?" I'm aware of a few deficiencies in the scripts. There are some assumptions such as the kernel config file's name being based on the hostname, the names of the cvsup config files and a few paths. I've tried to parameterise as much as reasonable. The scripts don't look for data in existing config files. It would probably be better to at least test for variables in places like make.conf. Logs will accumulate, so manual cleanup is needed. While a simple "find" could remove old logs, I prefer to leave that to the admin's discretion. Using make instead of the shell would probably be a better tool choice, but I know the shell better than I know make. Please mercilessly fill me in on the rest. I know the scripts `work', but I always want things to work better. I'd also like to know if any of you find these useful. -Andrew- -- _______________________________________________________________________ | -Andrew J. Caines- Unix Systems Engineer A.J.Caines@altavista.net | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message