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Date:      Sat, 08 Oct 2011 04:35:11 -0400
From:      Allen <Unix.Hacker@comcast.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   pkg_upgrade seems to try server that isn't right
Message-ID:  <4E900B3F.9010400@comcast.net>

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Hi all,

I recently started taking BSD more seriously, and I'm coming from using
Windows first, then, trying to learn DOS, and seeing there was no point
outside of a hobby, and, Linux and BSD at very similar points in time,
however, I always seemed to stick with Linux a little more.

The main reasons were ease of updating software installed. (My first
exposure to FreeBSD was when I was walking around Best Buy one day, and,
after having bought multiple versions of Linux from there, and BeOS, I
one day saw the "BSD PowerPak" for sale for 59 dollars, which came with
FreeBSD 4.0) this was around the year 2000.

I saw Unix and, being that I was just starting in Computers, and didn't
know much other than that I REALLY wanted something more Unix like that
wasn't Linux, I instantly bought the BSD thing without thinking twice.

I noticed it was very different from Linux; In Linux, even Slackware,
updating Software that had Security Flaws in it was as simple as using
wget to grab the updated version, and upgradepkg to install it.

At the time, FreeBSD's version meant screwing with source code, and, not
wanting to run a system totally insecure, I would install it for a
while, use it, and then generally use something else I could keep
patched easier.

I noticed a little while ago I had "upgrade_pkg" and since I have 0
Ports (I don't need to squeeze out extra performance, I'm not running a
Server, so I only compile when I have to, and I like Binaries more so I
generally install my software either with sysinstall, or, pkg_add -r
whateverIWant) and then, get emailed that my software has a security
flaw, and from there it usually went down hill.

Well, now I have Hardware security in place, and that allowed me to not
worry about it as much, su, I started reading the man page. I saw that I
could do this:

upgrade_pkg -a

When I ran this, I noticed it was trying to get to a server about
FreeBSD Release 8, and freebsd-update, uses the right one.
freebsd-update grabs patches no problem, but for software packages it
doesn't touch them, though I DO wish it did.... If I could code in C,
the first thing I would do, would be to build a Package for FreeBSD that
basically was like this:

fbsdupdate --update --all

That would download, and install, ALL Security and Bug Fixes, no matter
if it was in the base system, the ports, or whatever. Since I'm no
coder, I can't though. But I did wonder why it wouldn't work.

I read through the man page, looking to see if it showed a file it uses
to decide where to contact the server, but there isn't one. So
basically, how do you make upgrade_pkg work the way it says in the man page?

I basically figured I'd run upgrade_pkg -af and let it update and
reinstall everything, and Hoped that would patch it, but it kept going
for some FreeBSD8-RELEASE server saying it couldn't contact it, and as I
said, freebsd-update works fine, grabbing things from the server for
FreeBSD-RELEASE 8.2 which is what I'm running.



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