Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 16:52:53 -0700 From: Joe Kelsey <joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us> To: "Stable" <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Message-ID: <15157.11221.593513.478892@zircon.zircon.seattle.wa.us> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010623150807.034a09a0@24.0.95.106> References: <JBEOKPCEMKJLMJAKBECCGENKDBAA.jwatkins@firstplan.com> <15155.29806.145760.832648@guru.mired.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20010623150807.034a09a0@24.0.95.106>
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FreeBSD Admin writes: > I haven't posting anything in some time, so I'm making up for it now with > this tome. 8-) It says nothing important and means nothing, so skip as you > like. > > [snip] 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. You should purchase the latest CD's and use the "upgrade" procedures to keep your system current. You have everything that you need right now. simply start with your 3.x CD's and upgrade your 2.x system to 3.x, then upgrade your 3.x system to 4.x. The upgrade path is relatively painless. All of your problems can be traced back to old hardware or inexperience with the latest thinking in BSD land. Because you have not upgraded your 2.x system, you are essentially stuck. Either get newer hardware to work with or go through the upgrade based on your subscription disks. The tracking of stable is not for everyone. Noone *needs* to track stable. The CD subscription and binary upgrade from CD should be sufficient for you and for most everyone who wants to stay relatively current with stable. You will miss the security upgrades unless there is a relatively easy way to incorporate those without recompiling from source. I think that most of the problems result from users trying to track stable due to fear of security holes. The CD release process seems to work well for people wishing to simply "upgrade" from one release to another without recompiling from source. The process of recompiling is fraught with danger unless you are familiar with make, and especially the peculiar make used by FreeBSD. What we need is an apt-get-like upgrade path for security fixes that solves the problem of people tracking one version of stable or another. Remove the necessity of recompiling from source and we remove almost all reasons for people to complain about the stableness of stable just because they ran into a minor problem of timing WRT cvsup and updates to the source tree. 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? /Joe To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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