determining freebsd-update status

[Jason Helfman]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 02:05:15PM -0500, Tom Worster thus spake:
>thanks for the answers, jason. two more questions below.
>
np

>
>On 3/4/11 1:09 PM, "Jason Helfman" <jhelfman at e-e.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 11:32:11AM -0500, Tom Worster thus spake:
>>>to determine roughly where a server is in its updates (we're running only
>>>RELEASE) i do:
>>>
>>>1 - check the 1st 4 fields of the tag file in the freebsd-update working
>>>dir.
>>
>>Just because the 1st 4 fields are populated, doesn't necessarily imply it
>>is
>>running at that version. The tag is stating what it has recently "seen"
>>as
>>available on the update server, but that doesn't mean that those updates
>>have been installed.
>
>ok.
>
>
>>>
>>>2 - check the output of freebsd-update IDS.
>>>
>>>is it the case that freebsd-update IDS checks base system status relative
>>>to what's referenced in the tag file?
>>
>>No. The hash index file is pulled from the update server for the
>>installed
>>release, and your system is compared with that.
>
>"the installed release" being what exactly?

What the system is running.

>
>and how does freebsd-update determine what it is?

 From the code, it appears to use `uname -r` and `uname -m`, for release and
architecture, respectively.

-jgh