getting the running patch level

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2012-Aug-19 16:46:37 +0200, Paul Schenkeveld <freebsd at psconsult.nl> wrote:
>  - Teach both installworld and freebsd-update to maintain manifest
>    files of what is installed and log that update, place all manifests
>    somewhere under /var/db and the update log in /var/log.

I'm not sure what detail you intend here.  One line per installworld
or similar sounds OK.  One line per file seems excessive - especially
if you intend to retain history ("df -ki" suggests that a base install
is around 30,000 files).

>  - Having manifests of what's installed, one could check if all files
>    are stil the right version, if older manifests are not discarded
>    when performing an update this could also detect files that were
>    not updated for whatever reason or that were reverted, i.e. by
>    restoring some backup.  E.g.:
>
>      Current userland version: 8.3-RELEASE-p4
>      /usr/sbin/named is at 8.3-RELEASE-p2
>      /usr/bin/openssl is at 8.3-RELEASE

How do you envisage this tool determining that /usr/sbin/foo is at
8.3-RELEASE-p2 and this is incorrect when userland is at (eg)
8.3-RELEASE-p4?  Note that updating your system from 8.3-RELEASE-p2 to
8.3-RELEASE-p4 may not change /usr/sbin/foo and therefore it will
remain untouched.

>The /etc/issue file mentioned several times in this thread is like motd
>but intended to be shown before a login prompt.  This works for console
>logins (getty) but not for remote logins.

SSH includes provision for displaying information prior to login - see
the "Banner" option in sshd_config.  Note that this is most definitely
the wrong place to include system version details.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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