Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 1 May 2002 10:56:06 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John Mills <jmmills@telocity.com>
To:        FreeBSD-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   NewbieQ on Update (Was: Re: FreeBSD patch level)
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.21.0205011032270.1726-100000@otter.mills-atl.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020501120505.J75614@wantadilla.lemis.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hello -

I am going through my first kernel building exercise and would appreciate
confirmation or redirection.

On Wed, 1 May 2002, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> There's no such thing.  You're trying to apply Linux terminology to
> FreeBSD.  We don't "patch", we update.  A RELEASE is just that, a
> release, and so it stays the way it is.  In the meantime, fixes get
> applied to the STABLE branch in the CVS tree.  This is all described
> in the handbook.

I installed FreeBSD-4.5 from 'RELEASE' CDs I made. I am happy with the
setup and functionality I got in a _very_ modest (quaint, even) platform:
Cyrix-133[?] with 16MBy RAM, c. 3GBy HDD, old CD. This is a 'learner' box,
not mission-critical. Now I want to be sure I have a "reasonable" set of
fixes, especially security fixes.

I used 'cvsup' and the 'standard-supfile' to pull a RELENG_4_5 fileset.

Running 'make world' was about a 7-hour project, not counting a number of
aborts apparently due to overheating. It finally ran to completion when I
took the cover off the box. Time to add more ventilation and move all
those cables _away_ from the RAM! My next step is presumably the kernel.

My first question is, was this a good tag to achieve what I wanted, or
should I have used RELENG_4 (or something else)?

My second question is, if I do change to RELENG_4 ("Stable", if I
understand), will my system be dramatically different from what I got with
4.5 RELEASE, or what I'll get with RELENG_4_5 ?

I've noticed only one peculiarity in my current installation: the HDDs on
my primary IDE are found and work properly by interupt, but for some
reason the CDROM drive on the secondary is seen as "PIO" - these
controllers have IRQs 14 and 15 respectively, according to the BIOS's
startup log.

My third question is: should this be a kernel configuration issue, a
startup configuration issue, or some type of passed parameter at boot?

I plan to walk through the steps (including some backups) outlined in the
Handbook and the FreeBSD Reference (Thanks, Greg.), but a bit of
hand-holding would be appreciated.

TIA.
 - John Mills


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.LNX.4.21.0205011032270.1726-100000>