keeping freebsd uptodate - doubt

[Karol Kwiatkowski]

saravanan ganapathy wrote:
> What is the recommended period to update the ports?

Someone else should comment on that, but I think updating (cvsup)
ports tree once a week should be often enough to track changes and
rare enough to not overload mirrors. That applies to single desktop
machine, if you're using more machines / servers it's probably better
to setup local mirror for that.

As for installed ports, I think you should update installed port when:

1. there are security patches available (a must)
2. there is a new version available with new features / better
performance / etc (but only if you need/want the new functionality)

ad1:
You have already installed portaudit which takes care of security
warnings. Have a look at daily "security run output" emails. For
example, today I got:

> [snip]
> Checking for a current audit database:
> 
> Database created: Tue Feb  1 02:40:19 CET 2005
> 
> Checking for packages with security vulnerabilities:
> 
> Affected package: perl-5.8.5
> Type of problem: perl -- File::Path insecure file/directory permissions.
> Reference: <http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/portaudit/c418d472-6bd1-11d9-93ca-000a95bc6fae.html>
> [snip]

Then I went to http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html, saw it has
been already updated in ports, fired up cvsup...

ad2:
When such event occurs (say, new version of KDE) just update ports
tree and do a portupgrade.


> Is there any announcements for any port update? So
> that     I can manually update the ports.

I think http://www.freshports.org/ or
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html could be what you want.


> Is portupgrade contains the security patches also?

I'm not sure what that means. Portupgrade simply updates a port, it
takes all patches provided by port manager, applies them, compile,
etc. (in case of building from source). So, if there are any security
patches for a port, yes, portupgrade will take care of them.


Hope that helps,

Karol

-- 
Karol Kwiatkowski  <freebsd at orchid dot homeunix dot org>