Question about FreeBSD 5.3

[Matthew Seaman]

Robert Marella wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:56:11 +0000
> Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
>>    5.3-STABLE is a moving target from the RELENG_4 development branch. 
>>  It should run stably and it can be used usefully as a desktop system 
>>or whatever, but tracking -STABLE is not recommended for *absolutely has 
>>to be up 24x7* type applications, because new functionality and support 
>>for new hardware will be introduced, which can result in problems 
>>occasionally.  (In practice this very rarely happens: which is a great 
>>tribute to the degree of care taken by FreeBSD developers).

Err... Um... I hope you all noticed the deliberate misteak.  Of course 
it's the RELENG_5 branch for 5.3-STABLE.

> If one is *tracking* 5.3-STABLE on a non-critical system and is subscribed 
> to the stable mailing list, how does one know when to cvsup and build world? 
> I have not seen anything on the list to indicate I should update my source.
> 
> I have seen that 5.3-RELEASE is now P2 but nothing about STABLE. Should I 
> be doing it regularly (weekly, daily)? Or did I just miss something?
> 
> Thank you for this and all of your previous posts. I look forward to 
> seeing your name as a poster for I know it will be another learning 
> experience.

You should certainly be subscribed to freebsd-security at ... or 
freebsd-announce at ... so you get notification of any new security alerts. 
  Any security fixes that go into one of the -RELEASE branches will also 
go into -STABLE, so doing a cvsup+buildworld cycle will get you the fixes.

Otherwise, if you're particularly interested, you can subscribe to one 
of the cvs-foo at ... mailing lists and see all of the commits going into 
the tree, or you can just cvsup(1) regularly (but not necessarily 
buildworld at the same time) and watch the cvsup output to see if there 
have been commits to part of the system that particularly interest you.

Or you can just decide to update daily or monthly or at whatever 
frequency suits you best, as well as updating when ever a security alert 
appears that affects you.

Unless there's a particular bug that's been affecting you, there really 
isn't any /necessity/ to update.  However, it can be a useful exercise 
to help you keep in touch with current areas of work, and it helps the 
developers if you can report any problems with an up-to-date system.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       8 Dane Court Manor
                                                       School Rd
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Tilmanstone
Tel: +44 1304 617253                                  Kent, CT14 0JL UK
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