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Date:      Wed, 30 May 2001 12:20:54 -0400
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com>
To:        Don Dugger <dugger@hotlz.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: upgrades [each time more trouble]
Message-ID:  <3B151DE6.DD7A47E5@iowna.com>
References:  <000101c0e91a$208e6bc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <3B151B2B.6232E53C@hotlz.com>

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Don Dugger wrote:
> 
> Let me start by saying that upgrading any OS is a problem. With Windoze
> the bugs it introduces are hidden by the general buggy nature of the OS.
> My customer on Sun usually wait until Sun no longer supports the version
> there on before upgrading, and same with HP UX. Redhat has done a great
> deal of work to make upgrades easier with varying success.
> 
> Having said that, I too feel that FreeBSD community has put less effort
> in making upgrades easier. I started with FreeBSD 1.5 and some upgrades
> went well and other gave me problems. In all cases they were an effort,
> which I did not look forward to. There has been a project in work
> towards this as far back as I've been using FreeBSD, but it seems not
> mush progress has been made. I think this maybe due to the fact that the
> effort has been to make the install easier rather then the upgrade
> easier. I have seen HOW TOs, but there usually out of date with each
> release. I tried writing scripts to reinstall the packages and ports,
> but with release they had to modified.
> 
> Now having said that, I would rather use FreeBSD then any other OS. I'm
> bring this up to see what others think and what sort of solution others
> are using.

I'm curious, when you say upgrade are you talking about the binary
upgrade procedure? I didn't get the impression that the original poster
was talking about that, but I may be wrong.
Can't really comment on that, since I've never used it.
With regards to Ted's earlier posts, my servers never get upgraded
unless a security problem is announced that poses a threat to that
particular server, or hardware gets replaced.
My personal workstation (which uses FreeBSD exclusively) was installed
with a clean 4.0-RELEASE and has been upgraded every month or so (via
cvsup) ever since. I think the mergemaster system is fantastic, and I've
had no problems with ports.
When I upgrade ports, I back up config files, do a pkg_delete of the old
version and any dependencies and then reinstall the port from scratch
and merge the old config files back in. This is somewhat time consuming,
but I've never had any problems.
The cvsup system and make world system are incredible. I want to take a
minute to congratulate everyone who's involved in that for keeping it
working so well.
I, too, prefer FreeBSD to anything else I've used. I occasionally get an
itching to see what all the Linux fuss is about, and install it
somewhere to play with, but I've never actually used Linux for anything.

-Bill

-- 
If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,
then what can I get for two hands in the bush?

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