Updates / Upgrades

[Da Rock]

On Mon, 2009-01-26 at 03:38 -0500, Akenner wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have installed FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE
>  on two of my systems. One of them (This one I'm using) is a PC I use as 
> one of my main desktops. The other I decided on after wanting to keep 
> safe with my main one which has important data on it, so I decided to 
> use another machine and do an install so I could test out patches and 
> updates on it before applying them to this machine so that if something 
> happened during the updates I wouldn't lose this machine and could just 
> format the other machine if something really crashed or had a really 
> huge error, and basically use this machine as production and that one as 
> the test for things so I don't break / screw up anything.
> 
> Anyway, I used a tool like this:
> 
> #update-scan
> 
> It gave me a list of ports and things to update and how to do it. Thing 
> is, when I took the advice of what the application said, and did what it 
> said, it still shows it.
> 
> I moved over to the test machine and grabbed the application and ran it 
> to see what I could do, and noticed I did miss the first step, so I 
> figured that was the problem, and used my test machine to do an update 
> for Perl. I saw it had two things to do to upgrade those packages, so I 
> did step one, then, did step two.
> 
> I figured this would remove it from the list of packages that need an 
> upgrade, and after a few hours of downloading some stuff off my FTP 
> server (MP3s, no software) I rebooted the machine.
> 
> I was surprised to find Perl still listing to do the exact same thing. 
> So this time I did this:
> 
> portupgrade -a
> 
> It said I needed to run the pkgdb thing, so I did.
> 
> Once it finished and fixed up a few apps that needed something or other, 
> I ran it again:
> 
> portupgrade -a
> 
> After a while, it started going and I figured everything would be done 
> and I could update my main box after checking to be sure that the 
> patches didn't break anything.
> 
> Trouble is, after the reboot, I noticed that it still listed all of them.
> 
> I'm almost certain the problem is me. So my question is, what am I doing 
> wrong? I'm no guru or BSD hacker, but I am a competent user of Unix 
> systems and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
> 
> I'm a LITTLE new to doing on the fly upgrades like this I'll admit. 
> Before I'd just wait for a new version of FreeBSD to come out, like say 
> 6.0 - 6.x and just do a fresh install after backing up the small things 
> I need and call it a day.
> 
> So can someone please either type, copy and paste, or link me, to some 
> info on doing updates and upgrades and patches so I can keep my system 
> updated?
> 
> BOTH machines are running FreeBSD-7.1-RELEASE and both have almost the 
> same software installed on them. I'd like to find out because I'm really 
> enjoying 7.1, it has to be by far the best release I've used to date.
> 
> portupgrade -a used to do all this for me and take a while, but I'm not 
> sure what is going on with this one.
> 
> Thanks for any help,
> 

It can be tricky at first, and I'm not sure about the update-scan
utility you're using. Check out the handbook and just run the directions
from there:

portsnap fetch
portsnap update (or you can run "portsnap fetch update" in one go)

then

freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install (or all in one as above)

then (assuming you've installed portupgrade as you mentioned above)

portupgrade -a

then reboot.

If this doesn't work post back your errors and we can help you debug. If
there are no errors in running these steps then all is good! :)

If you want to check your programs are up to date then run the portsnap
steps again and run pkg_version -v. The freebsd-update steps will tell
you whether FreeBSD is up to date.

HTH and good luck.