Re: The project
On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Per Lundberg wrote:
# > That's an excellent point -- I'd forgotten about that. How are upgrades of
# > the base system handled?
#
# I don't even know if it's possible (I'm quite fresh in the BSD world, but
# I definitely hope it's doable).
There are several ways actually. The one Hamish mentioned is the
upgrade option via sysinstall. The other options involve building
from source. Find a machine and CVSup the sources to the whole
base distribution into /usr/src (~220M). Type this:
cd /usr/src; make world
You've just updated your entire disribution with bits that are known
to work together. If you have a big server and want to build on it
and "reinstall" on a bunch of smaller machines then do this.
nfs-mount /usr/{src,obj} from the big server
cd /usr/src; make -f Makefile.inc1 reinstall
Do this for a couple of hundred boxes every couple of months and
you begin to see how powerful this can be. No doubt there are
countless other ways, but these are the ones I've used.
# > I find the whole packages-in-/usr/local thing a bit odd, but I suspect
# > that FreeBSD doesn't subscribe to the FHS so it's probably just a difference
# > of opinion.
#
# I think this has to with the fact that most BSD people prefers to compile
# stuff themselves, which makes the package handling quite immature (esp .
# compared to Debian's, but you probably already know that. :)
Not necessarily. I like using packages too. I prefer to do it
from source because after all I'm a software engineer and I like
to play with software. :-) Ports like teTeX are one reason why
packages are great, beacuse I don't have to wait hours for it to
build. They come pre-configured and ready to run with the minimum
of fuss.
-steve
Reply to: