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BSD Operating Systems

August 2002 Daemon News Ezine Published 102

Posted by michael from the your-ideas-intrigue-me dept.
questionlp writes "The August 2002 Ezine has been published and is packed with articles and columns with topics ranging from behind-the-scenes look at VicFUG 2002, a report on the recent O'Reilly OSCON, one's adventure through Unix starting from Linux to FreeBSD, a HOWTO on backing up FreeBSD with tar and SMBFS, plus a look at some of the most popular web browsers (most of which are available in the BSD Ports collection)."
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August 2002 Daemon News Ezine Published More

August 2002 Daemon News Ezine Published

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  • The newsletters are so boring!

    I know this is gonna get me -1 flamebait, but at least I'm honest:
    {{{
    $ uname -rsm
    FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE i386
    }}}

    Hmmm, on retrospect, the Linux mags are boring too, and the Windoze ones are even worse.

    I recommend everyone to pop over to MP3.com and download Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie's "Every OS Sucks", can you tell I listened to it this morning? :-)

    YAWIAR.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Updating packages and update the system are two different things. A weekly portupgrade -a is one thing. A cvsup and rebuild of world weekly would be overkill.
      However, it's so easy to do, I could see people doing it.
      • I've found portupgrade so easy I use it once a day on my DevBox. Only takes 5mins unless something big needs upgrading. In doing this I've managed to fix several vunerabilities before I've even known they existed.

        The only thing that stops me doing a build world more often than once a month is that mergemaster takes a little concentration.
    • >One comment in the Life After Redhat article stuck
      >out. He loves FreeBSD and his systems are
      >"upgraded once a week (all software)". Is this
      >normal pratice? I still have SuSE 6.3 systems
      >running.

      "Normal practice" varies depending on who you're talking to. :)

      On the networks I administrate, I have a strict policy of "no unjustified upgrades", which usually translates to applying only security patches and relevent bug fixes. It might include new versions of software if, and only if, we're rolling out an enhancement to our services that necessitates it.

      Part of the reason for being so restrictive is because we do QA and testing after every upgrade, so all upgrades have an associated cost in admin time. It may seem overly paranoid, but we've caught a lot of subtle issues that would have otherwise effected service to our customers.

      Matt

      • It may seem overly paranoid, but we've caught a lot of subtle issues that would have otherwise effected service to our customers.

        Yes, effecting service to your customers would be a disaster... You can do better without them ;)

        • He's right, though. Customers may end up requesting things they don't really need. Sometimes it is better to educate them in how to use the tools that already exist than to install every little piece of software they all "need" at the time.

          They pay us to administer their servers. I think we (administrators) do a better job if we keep the server stable and up than we would if we were just their lackeys.
    • One comment in the Life After Redhat article stuck out. He loves FreeBSD and his systems are "upgraded once a week (all software)". Is this normal pratice? I still have SuSE 6.3 systems running.

      It seems to be normal practice on Debian, probably because it's the best way to pick up the security patches.
      apt-get update
      apt-get upgrade

    • Is this normal pratice?

      It is for me. Remember though, this is an upgrade to installed ports, not to the whole system. Ports includes everything above the kernel and userland. In Linux terms, it would be everything that isn't installed during a minimal bare-bones install.

      Approx once a week I cvsup the ports tree, check for updates to my installed packages, and generally upgrade everything. For this week, it turns out that I can update cups-base, gettext, kdebase, mozilla, netpbm and qt.
    • It's really quite simple. You can lock into the RELEASE version of the OS and only get critical updates that way. If you edit your /etc/cvsupfile so that this this is set:

      *default tag=RELENG_4_6

      when you run "cvsup /etc/cvsupfile" you will pull down FreeBSD 4.6.1-RELEASE-p7 today not 4.6-STABLE.

      Most productions systems are safe to update once a week that way. You will eventually need to do a real update.

    • One comment in the Life After Redhat article stuck out. He loves FreeBSD and his systems are "upgraded once a week (all software)". Is this normal pratice? I still have SuSE 6.3 systems running.
      He is serious, but that's because it is a simple and trouble-free process under BSD compared to what this would be like under an RPM-based Linux. Even kernel compilation is easier. It is possible to give a cvsup file a target to only make security updates (something that should be done for any system connected to the net) and do it less often, like when security annoucements are made, if that scares you. :-) Also what is updated can be any amount rather than the entire system. Example files and good documentation exists concerning the cvsup file used for this.

      Personally I try to keep my entire system upgraded to -STABLE (rather than security-patches-only for -RELEASE or the bleeding edge of -CURRENT), and I manage to download all of the neccesary patches over a dialup modem. :-) Because I have a dialup modem I have to do it frequently though. I've never had any trouble from "cvsuping" yet, and it's so fast that like I said I do it over a 56K connection.



  • And still no *BSD Is Dying post. He must have slept in or something. Or maybe they shut off net access at the asylum.

  • This really is very neat indeed. There are quite a few people who use BSD everyday, me. And they know that people might want to brush up their skills or read about things they might not have previously known about. I really like the fact that slashdot gave them a little boost in traffic.

    While it may be an advertisement, it's a free service and the entire e-zine is based on OSS ... so ... everyone who keeps with the "this is stupid post articles from them" and "BSD is dead" ... chill

  • I know this article was put up on /. yesterday, but I saw BSD and figured I still had a fighting change.

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