Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 02:45:24 +0200 From: "Michael Nottebrock" <michaelnottebrock@gmx.net> To: "Joe Kelsey" <joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us>, "Stable" <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Message-ID: <001201c0fc46$f553e440$0408a8c0@kiste> References: <JBEOKPCEMKJLMJAKBECCGENKDBAA.jwatkins@firstplan.com><15155.29806.145760.832648@guru.mired.org><4.3.2.7.2.20010623150807.034a09a0@24.0.95.106> <15157.11221.593513.478892@zircon.zircon.seattle.wa.us>
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Kelsey" <joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us> To: "Stable" <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2001 1:52 AM Subject: RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD > You make some very good points. For you, like 99% of Linux users, you > are better off never attempting to cvsup or to track stable. > [...] I just like to say that my experience with tracking stable is quite positive. I installed FreeBSD 4.2-Release with the boot floppies and a cdrom made from the ISO-image on an Intel 430-HX based PC with an oldish 2x cdrom drive and just 8 megs of ram (nowadays 24 megs of ram, running sendmail, uw-imap, samba, & dante, the latter three all compiled from the ports collection). I made my first cvsup when 4.2 was just in the process of being frozen to 4.3-Release, so I got 4.3-RC, which ran quite happily until yesterday, when i cvsup'd again to get myself a 4.3-STABLE without (known) security issues and to fix a problem 4.3-RC had with smbfs (which caused kernel panics). Apart from having to ask on this list where one kernel option went (and getting an answer within 10 minutes(!)), and having had to upgrade openssh from 2.3.0 to 2.9 from the (cvsup'd) ports collection (because X11-Forwarding does not seem to work with newer openssh clients like the 2.9pl1 in Linux Mandrake) doing a Release-2-Stable & and a Stable-2-Stable upgrade from source has been a breeze, thanks to the guidance of /usr/src/UPDATING and the FreeBSD Handbook (and the FAQ for explaining kern_securelevel and it's impact on file flags). All this updating from source at least never left me without a root filesystem when booting a new kernel (as did Linux Mandrake 7.2 after I got myself a binary kernel upgrade from their click'n'go updating utility, because they forgot to enable reiserfs support in that new kernel). IMHO, the FreeBSD stable sourcetree and also the ports & packages collection are in such a good shape that they don't need to fear any comparison with rpm or deb based Linux distributions. Hey, even Windows NT & 2000 boxen have been reported to break after installing a Service Pack, after all. > [...] > So Jordan. Is it possible to come up with a binary upgrade for security > fixes? We certainly do not need new iso images for every security fix, > but maybe a special package install for security fixes from the last > RELEASE? Almost there already. Take a look at the last SA (SA-01:40.fts), it features an (experimental) binary security fix, which comes in the form of a package. Greetings, Michael Nottebrock To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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