Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 09:25:16 -0500 From: Jim Pingle <lists@pingle.org> Cc: FreeBSD Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: freebsd-udapte upgrade. Message-ID: <545B84CC.3020907@pingle.org> In-Reply-To: <E0A19479-DCD7-42DB-BFC9-482125C38EF8@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> References: <545A348A.4000908@pean.org> <CACdU%2Bf-vY2DL=2mHGgU7Lggv2zxrhTji4Aoddrh3L=TAvOC-OA@mail.gmail.com> <BD86DB4D-1718-4E3F-9F4A-6B3531ED8FBA@pean.org> <2B820BFF-8565-4A4D-B05E-3A66E8939A52@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <2DE7E247-63F1-4A3E-AE25-46E1207BB0A8@pean.org> <E0A19479-DCD7-42DB-BFC9-482125C38EF8@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
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On 11/06/2014 08:52 AM, Paul Mather wrote: > On Nov 5, 2014, at 5:40 PM, Peter Ankerstål <peter@pean.org> wrote: >> But its too easy to corrupt your setup completely. This is much worse than mergemaster. And I haven’t seen any instructions on this in the handbook. > > I agree. I am more used to and more comfortable with source-based updates, but I have fairly recently started using freebsd-update on quite a few servers to help out co-admins newer to FreeBSD, who might be put off by updating from source. > > I'm more accustomed to mergemaster, and I like its merge options and way of merging changes to config files. I'm not too familiar with It is definitely too easy to leave a file in a state that is corrupt/broken which can cause a subsequent boot to fail in various ways, depending on which file was broken. I would love to see this work more like mergemaster. Having it (optionally) ignore ID tag changes and use the much more user-friendly merge choices would be a big win. That, and mergemaster's database of unmodified files that can be auto-upgraded if it hasn't already been addressed somehow. Recently I was upgrading some older systems and on two of them, freebsd-update wanted to touch nearly every file in /etc. I ended up tarring the merge dir up and copying it over to another system and doing some search/replace to fix things manually, then copying back over to the system being upgraded. It was an ugly dance, but it saved time over hand editing 300+ files during the freebsd-update process. The details of that system elude me at the moment but that may have been partially self-induced by moving from source-based updates to freebsd-update after a specific release. When it works and goes smoothly, freebsd-update is great and a real time saver vs source updating, especially on older systems. Mergemaster works great (especially using custom settings for merging) for source upgrades. Getting the two together (to me) seems like a classic chocolate/peanut butter moment. But perhaps there is some other drawback I'm not seeing. Jim
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