Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 09:00:47 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Chris Coleman <chrisc@vmunix.com> Cc: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Upgrading and Use of this list (gentle reminder) Message-ID: <19980723090047.45011@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980722175457.9231A-100000@vnode>; from Chris Coleman on Wed, Jul 22, 1998 at 05:57:58PM -0400 References: <3.0.5.32.19980722130055.0081c410@mx.serv.net> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980722175457.9231A-100000@vnode>
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On Wed, Jul 22, 1998 at 05:57:58PM -0400, Chris Coleman wrote:
> Have you tried a "source upgrade"?
>
> Basically:
>
> cd /usr/src
> cvsup stable-supfile.cvsup
> make buildworld && installworld
Of course there's a bit more to it than that, but without discussing
the actual technique (-questions and/or the Handbook for that) I'd like
to have a bit of a newbie dummy-spit here :-) Sorry Chris, I don't mean
to put down your response, but earlier this year a lot of people on
-questions were stating this as *the* approach, without realising that
some people (don't know they) can't follow it.
A few FreeBSD users have not bothered to install the sources. Perhaps
they have no room, or never imagined using them. This happens to apply
to a lot of newbies because a lot of home user/learners are newbies.
A few FreeBSD users don't have a good Internet connection. Perhaps they
dial in from home where combined local or long distance phone charges
and Internet time and/or bandwidth charges (both of which differ hugely
for different contries) can get pretty costly. Around here, for
example, a lot of Internet accounts charge by the minute or
automatically cut you off after say 1-3 hours on line, in order to
reduce overall usage. I suspect that a larger than average proportion
of home newbies have limitations to their Internet access.
Those more well equipped often recommend cvsup because the method is
the easiest for them so it sounds good for newbies. There's nothing
wrong with that; a little practice and a lot of reading and anyone can
do it. What I'd like to see, though, is more appreciation for the
limits that a lot of people are working within.
As I mentioned on -questions, it is no longer realistic to assume that
these resources are available to newbies, and it would help a great
deal if recommendations were accompanied by lists of required
resources. Where use of disk space or a high volume download is
involved, it can be pretty important to have some idea whether it's
more like 1 or 10 or 100 megabytes we're talking about. I've found it
extremely difficult to find that kind of guidance. Well, they don't
have to count and worry; they just do it. Aah, what luxury! :-)
If you happen to have hundreds of megabytes sitting idle on your
FreeBSD partition, and Internet use doesn't cost you an arm and three
legs, then there's probably no reason not to install the sources and
have a stab at cvsup if you want to, especially if it's only a home use
machine. But I have no idea what would happen if you ran out of disk
space half way through, for example. I doubt it would be much fun. If
it were me, upon that kind of advice I might consider reinstalling
FreeBSD from the old CD, complete with sources this time, onto a much
larger partition, and getting another Internet account that had a
pricing scheme more suited to large downloads. But I would know that,
without being told that it was necessary. I wonder how many other
newbies would have known?
I believe the root cause of the problem here is that the FreeBSD
community is not used to having so many home users and unix-newbies
around. For years they've been working with ample hardware and enough
background to work most things out for themselves, and so have the
majority of FreeBSD users they've known about. Of course many FreeBSD
newbies also fall into this category, but these days increasing numbers
of newbies don't.
Sometimes the advice we get from -questions makes accidental
assumptions about our resources and it's necessary to proceed with
caution, perhaps follow up with a question about resources required, if
you know you are working within limitations (and that's another good
reason to supply details of your system when asking a question). There
are some areas of the documentation that I think could be improved for
us by hinting at, for example, the amount of disk space required. Of
course, if I start complaining about this too loudly I'm gonna have to
do something about it :-) Maybe I'll take a newbie-look at the Handbook
some time soon and see if I'm right or wrong.
Actually, since nobody else has come up with this particular dummy-spit
before, I might have missed the point somewhere. Please correct me if
you think that's so.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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