Re: [tlug] Kana-Problems

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 07:05:21AM +0200, Niels Kobschaetzki wrote:
> 
> I like my desktop-system up to date and I have not the time to follow
> the changelogs of the 1000+ ports I have installed right now to check
> if it is necessary to install updates. I expect a useful result from
> an update and as long as I don't do a distribution-upgrade (that's
> what it called on Ubuntu, don't know the right term for FreeBSD) I do
> not really expect an update of ports to break my system. 



FreeBSD does have the very useful /usr/ports/UPDATING.  You
should always check it before doing an update.  



Therefore I
> update it regularly (and usually as automatic as possible).
> How do you keep track of all the stuff you have installed on your
> system (and if an update brings a new feature you would like to have -
> not only security stuff)? RSS-feeds for every single project you have
> an application from installed?

On FreeBSD, there are various ways--there is the very low traffic
security list. Subscribe to it and you will receive notification of
security updates.  There is the portaudit port which is useful for
keeping track of new vulnerabilities in your ports.  

As for updating ports on a regular basis, most people now use Colin
Percival's portsnap, which can be run as a cronjob.  

After the ports tree has been updated, you can use a variety of port
management tools to check what ports of yours are out of date.  

I prefer the little known (when compared to portversion and Doug
Barton's portmaster) pkg_replace.  

pkg_replace -V will give me a list of ports that can be updated. 

-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Giles: What ever happened to Latin? At least when that made no 
sense, the church approved.