Applying security updates to ports.

[Freddie Cash]

On March 26, 2008 12:18 pm Siju George wrote:
> I ask this because I am more familiar with OpenBSD and it has
>
> 1) The ports tree that comes with the OS Release
> 2) The ports tree that gets only security updates ( called
> ports-stable) 3) The ports tree that has newer versions of ports (
> called ports-current )

There is only 1 ports tree on FreeBSD, that is constantly being updated.

You can update the ports tree that is on your system using a variety of 
methods.  The two most common are:
  - portsnap
  - csup

Read the man pages, Handbook sections on keeping current and ports, and 
the examples listed under /usr/share/examples/cvsup for more information.

Once the ports tree on your system has been updated, then you can use 
tools like pkg_version to see which of your installed apps have updates 
available, portaudit to see which installed apps have known security 
vulnerabilities, and portmaster to automatically update the app(s) and 
their dependencies.

pkg_version is part of the base OS.  portaudit and portmaster can be 
installed via the ports tree.

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com