FreeBSD Handbook sec. 26.2 (freebsd-update) missing info

Mike Brown mike at skew.org
Sun Sep 4 11:02:53 UTC 2011


> Ah.  Anything -STABLE is not supported through freebsd-update.  STABLE,
> despite the name, is a development branch.  If you want to use
> freebsd-update than you need to be running a -RELEASE version.  Even so,
> you're going to need to upgrade to something quite a lot more recent
> than 8.0-RELEASE to get support.  See the list of supported versions here:
> 
>    http://www.freebsd.org/releng/
> 
> RELENG_8_0 is no longer officially supported, and you would be well
> advised to upgrade to a more recent version.  RELENG_8_2 a.k.a
> 8.2-RELEASE is what I'd recommend.

Thanks for all this info. The handbook definitely needs some work in that 
section. The intro makes it sound like cvsup, make buildworld, etc. isn't 
something anyone needs to do anymore, when in fact it's only -RELEASE users 
who can use the tool. Even then, if too much time has gone by, the release 
will have fallen out of support, and freebsd-update won't work with it.
That seems like something that should be mentioned :)

However, I'm kind of confused now, because I arrived at that part of the 
handbook via a web search for freebsd-update, but I notice that if I navigate 
with the Prev/Next links at the bottom of the page, the next chapter is 
chapter 26 again, only now it's about Serial Communications. And Prev from 
there is Network Communication.

It seems there's a 26.2 freebsd-update chapter hanging around, separate from
the (current?) 24.2 freebsd-update chapter.

26.2: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/updating-freebsdupdate.html
24.2: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/updating-upgrading-freebsdupdate.html

The download-related text I was asking about is not in the 24.2 version.

-Mike



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