One of the greatest advantages that *BSD has over other Unix variants is the cvsup/make world process. The cvsup/make world process allows you to update your system at any time.
Painless FreeBSD System Updating
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Eugenia Loli
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When will we see a desktop distro made this brilliant way? I’d love for a user friendly BSD distro pop up, as I’m confident things like this is what everyone wants…
im not sure i want to grab the latest code of a cvs at any time as its more likely to not be stable then being stable unless its a special cvs designed to only house stable code and then stuff like “apt-get dist upgrade” works just as well…
FreeBSD stable is just that: a stable CVS that only gets well-tested changes.
BTW, everyone should *always* read /usr/src/UPDATING for gotchas before building (but after you update the source) . I’m surprised the author didn’t mention it.
I wonder why so many people praise CVSup, it doesn’t even run on all architectures FreeBSD supports, and it doesn’t even run reliably on some architectures it supports (amd64).
Why isn’t the FreeBSD project considering another distribution method for sources?
What are the advantages of FreeBSD’s method for updating over Gentoo?
I’m aware that Gentoo’s portage system was inspired by the FreeBSD ports tree. I’m far less familiar with the seamless updating features of FBSD. If someone who is familiar with doing updates on both systems would be so kind as to share how they feel about updating on fbsd vs gentoo, it would be much appreciated.
When will we see a desktop distro made this brilliant way? I’d love for a user friendly BSD distro pop up, as I’m confident things like this is what everyone wants…
You’re right. FreeBSD does own!
I just wish more people would just wisen up and realize that.
I don’t think we’ll be seeing a desktop distro based on FreeBSD. Not that it can’t be done, but probably because that’s not FreeBSD’s goal. The FreeBSD team was always geared more for servers and high end type stuff. It doesn’t maan it can’t be a desktop, because of course you can take FreeBSD and install GNOME or KDE and voila you have a desktop FreeBSD machine.
Personally, I wouldn’t want a FreeBSD desktop. What I’d rather have though is a FreeBSD workstation with emphasis on work. I want a FreeBSD machine where I can easily do my work whether that “work” is reading email, surfing the web, programming, network related, or anything else. This is something I do already. FreeBSD might not make the greatest desktop, but it make a great workstation.
You might say, “What’s the difference with desktop and workstation?” I feel that the term workstation means business and the term desktop means more of a play thing. That’s just a personal thing.
I say leave the desktop to Windows or Linux, and let FreeBSD lead the way in Workstations and Servers. Remember their old slogan? “Turning PC’s into workstations.” I always did like that slogan. I also like “Power to serve” which they use now. Eitehr way, you have one powerfull Operating System.
There’s other ways of updating, Anonymous CVS and CTM. Worse comes to worse, you could update on a x86 PC, and tar/rysnc/scp/nfs/etc the files over to your non-x86 box.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/synching….
I wonder why so many people praise CVSup, it doesn’t even run on all architectures FreeBSD supports, and it doesn’t even run reliably on some architectures it supports (amd64).
Why isn’t the FreeBSD project considering another distribution method for sources?
I like CVSup because it’s pretty fast in doing whawt it does and very easy to use. I just use the supplied template and BAM! it works. I find it much easier to use than CVS and faster.
I might not be well suported on other architectures probably because it’s written in Modula3 (or whatever it is). Maybe there are portability issues with that. To be honest, I really don’t know but I’m sure it’s something that’s being worked on.
I have heard rumors that CVSup might be rewritten in C which might possibly solve those problems. Again, those are just rumors that I’ve read so they could be completely unfounded. If they’re not, I hope someone has more information on that.
I wish the other *BSD’s would use this as their preferred method of source updating. I know you can use them on the other *BSD’s but it’s just an option and not the prefered method.
I use FreeBSD and have recently been looking into Gentoo. Updating Gentoo is actually easier, all it requires is an “emerge sync” command and every program on your system and the os itself is updated. Some info on emerge can be found at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=…
and I’m sure you can find more just searching around the Gentoo site.
One of the advantages of FreeBSD over Linux is that there aren’t many of them (BSDs). It will be better if a pard of the FreeBSD developers would make this FreeBSD something like the Suse 9.1 distribution of Linux.
One thing that turned me away from BSD (I am a Gentoo user now) is that portupgrade does not always know the correct order in which to build packages, causing serious problems during upgrades. If anyone disagrees, let me point you to a special gnome update script that needed to be created to upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6: http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq26.html . Portage in Gentoo can calculate dependencies in such a way that this is avoided. I have a lot of respect for FreeBSD, and would use it more if I didn’t have to worry about things like this.
One thing that turned me away from BSD (I am a Gentoo user now) is that portupgrade does not always know the correct order in which to build packages, causing serious problems during upgrades.
Interesting. I’ve never run into any problems using portupgrade, but I don’t have that rat’s nest of packages called Gnome installed. I don’t think the problem is “serious” from FAQ entry #3.
Nitpick:
emerge sync does _not_ update your whole system. It just syncs portage. You have to update the world by doing emerge -u world.
Heck, I don’t even use Linux (BSD all the way baby), and even I know that.
<quote> I don’t have that rat’s nest of packages called Gnome installed. </quote>
I respect your decision not to use Gnome, but it has dependencies just like any other set of packages. One of my fellow sysadmins has had the same problem with normal server packages (ruby, php, apache, etc.). True, I guess it is not a huge problem, and certainly not detrimental to the system health, but I don’t want to go and specify the order to build packages by typing their names one by one in the correct order. I have been informed that portupgrade has gotten a lot better in latest releases and that it is being worked on heavily. I look forward to trying FreeBSD again when the 5.x branch is marked stable (yes, I know portupgrade has nothing to do with the 5.x series, but I want something shiny to try (-: )
freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install
Interesting, no problem with it here what so ever.
You don’t have things like this to worry about, unless you don’t pay attention to what you are doing. What you did was not upgrade everything needed, which in the area of portupgrade is generally -r or -R along with -a.
But what is the difference between using this and using Yum with Fedora? Or Apt with Debian.
Just type apt-get upgrade and you will be upgraded with the newest stuff in the repositories you have in your apt-sources file?
I mean anyone like Xandros, Lindows, Mepis or any other distro that uses a internet based install method could employ the same option. It’s not like it can’t be done by any Linux company that wanted to do it.
The problem with that is when you do a Willy Nilly upgrade like that some Libraries may get updated and may break some of the apps that are not included in their list of things to be upgraded.
Nah, if properly maitained, the chances of breaking something suck. This is becuase if something is no longer compatible with something, it’s revision is bumped when it’s depends are upgraded. Thus they both get upgraded.
Perhaps I missed it, but I am unclear on one point- does a ‘make world’ update all of your installed ports as well, or just the core OS?
I’m a big fan of cvsup, and while the article cited is
actually about six months old, FBSD doesn’t go stale as
rapidly as linux. So what the heck, cd /usr/ports and
off we go.
Imagine my surprise when doing ‘make’ wound up building
the entire modula-3 compiler and all the libraries it
needed, just so it could build a new cvsup.
Imagine my pleasure when this all worked correctly and
took 13 minutes of wall-clock time, including downloading
all the source.
Hi
Essentially it is the same process.
yum
apt-get
portage
ports
everything does the same process.
fetch headers
resolve dependencies
fetch packages
install/upgrade packages
there is a cool FreeBSD out there already, it’s called Mac OS X 8)
and isn’t it pwn?
make buildworld
builds only the world. The world is the FreeBSD-System (Kernel , Configs, Docs and Userland-Tools), but not the other Ports.
Or in other words:
Ports are installed in /usr/local and /usr/X11. make installworld installs all other things.
The advantage: Ports never change the system and the system never change ports. For example you can use a FreeBSD stable release and the newest ports.
All ports can be upgradet with “portupgrade -aR”.
That’s why source updates/upgrades as per ports are a superior solution to the binary mess that yum/apt/etc. provide. Not only is the software configured the way you want it (you can set options per package, per package regular expression, or on a system-wide basis), but you needn’t worry about library breakage (for the most part, though when gettext was upgraded recently, it broke a lot for the couple of days after release until everything else was updated).
For me it’s just a ~root/upgrade [which is just cvsup with a few options, then pkgdb with a few options, then portupgrade with a few options all wrapped up into a script] to download CVSup the ports tree, clean out extra files, and recompile/install updated software. No fuss, no muss.
Make world is used for updating the OS, not ports, for that you use portupgrade or do it manually.
It would be awesome to have this become stable
http://dev.gentoo.org/~g2boojum/bsd.html
> All ports can be upgradet with “portupgrade -aR”.
Do you mean it is possible to have a gnome desktop up-to-date by fetching packages and without having to recompile from sources ?
In my little FreeBSD experience I found frustrating trying to compile xfree86 from the ports, it took a lot of time on my celeron 400.
Compiling kde took about 10hours, after that I reboot because I was tired to wait.
I can accept to compile the world from sources, but not the ports.
Is there a simple tutorial that explain how to keep up-to-date a freebsd desktop by using packages and not sources ?
Thanks,
i’ve ran into the problem where portupgrade doesn’t install the dependencies in the correct order myself
i did not have gnome or kde or even x11 installed for that matter, if i remember correctly it was concerning ruby, ruby-bdb1 or something, php, pkgconfig, and portupgrade, it was a big bloody mess is what it was and it took quite a long time to clean up
however, i have only had this happen so severely 1 time, overall doing freebsd updates has been a breaze
=)
HI I am a newbie and I’m wondering how often the make world process has to be done. Do I have to do it every time I download updates? Thanks for help
RE: @natefrogg (IP: —.we.client2.attbi.com) – Posted on 2004-04-27 08:52:5
Is you mean it did not install the Xserver, that was becuase it is not needed for either of those.
RE: Andrea (IP: —.pool8016.interbusiness.it) – Posted on 2004-04-27 06:15:17
Just use portupgrade, it can do packages too.
ppl are mixing concepts above with cvsup and others linux upgrading systems.
cvsup does what name says updates your cvs tree, be it your “ports tree” or your “src tree”.
Ports tree, user land, is what it make you possible to install a third party application, and you can achieve this in two ways: by source where you use a freebsd crafted Makefile for that app; or by packages, a binary package for a precise Freebsd Version with all you need to run it.
Despite the above you can always install the app on your own with the “./configure;make install”, but that isnt the normal procedure and shouldnt be followed if you want to avoid lib problems and file localization sanity.
Src tree represents your src base land, all known nix utils that came bundle on a freebsd release, headers, libs, kernel, and config files.
After you apply a cvsup to update your “trees”, be it src or ports, you need to actually make the upgrade. On ports you can use a precious tool called portupgrade, that can be installed from /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade port. Or else you would need to “make deinstall”/”make install” in each port you had installed, one by one, and that can be tedious! (i count 522 ports, some count 1.000, the current ports tree of possible ports is 10.000)
On the other way, to actually upgrade your src tree, ie, after a SA – security advisory patch release, or just to move your system -stable, -release or -current you need actually to make, what we call your world.
The authors use the “make world”/”make kernel” shebang, i prefer the 4 steps detailed on /usr/src/UPDATING (this file should always be read after a src cvsup), and that is:
cd /usr/src;
make buildworld;
make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL;
make installkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL;
reboot; (to check if new kernel is bootable)
mergemaster -p;
make installworld;
mergemaster;
Actually you can omit the “reboot”, but that isnt adviceable for major version UPDATE, ie you are upgrading from 4.x->5.x for example.
xpto_xpto(at)sapo.pt
What are the advantages of FreeBSD’s method for updating over Gentoo?
I’m aware that Gentoo’s portage system was inspired by the FreeBSD ports tree. I’m far less familiar with the seamless updating features of FBSD. If someone who is familiar with doing updates on both systems would be so kind as to share how they feel about updating on fbsd vs gentoo, it would be much appreciated.
I wrote the Painless FreeBSD System Updating article this thread is about. The machine I referred to in the article now dualboots FreeBSD & Gentoo. Each system has it’s pluses & minuses. Emerge is a simpler command set, but when it goes awry problems seem to go longer without a fix. I’ve had 1-2 questions go unanswered on the Forums for months other than someone else saying they had the same issue. The FreeBSD ports system can be harder to keep in sync and a ‘pkgdb -F’ is all too frequently needed. I still prefer FreeBSD by far over most Linux variants but Gentoo is now a close second. I’m typing this from Gentoo now and it’s the only Linux I’ve ever kept installed for more than a month. Things in Linux seem to ‘just work’ more easily than BSD, although I attribute this to the belief that most open-source software (Gnome apps in particular) is written with Linux in mind with BSD an afterthought. BSD port maintainers do an outstanding job hiding this from the end user 99% of the time. More to say but I’m tired of typing. LOL