Portsnap Update Question

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Chris wrote:

>
> I'm preparing to apply all the recent updates to the production  
> servers I have on 6.1 R P6 tomorrow morning and want to make certain  
> I fully update the servers with the window of I have. I'll cvsup,  
> build and install world and kernel through the normal process. What  
> I've been doing is then running portsnap fetch update to apply  
> patches to the ports. In doing so, I've not seen recompilations take  
> place and remained somewhat fuzzy as to whether I was merely  
> retrieving snapshots of source for whatever is in /usr/ports or if in  
> addition, somehow binary changes were being applied to programs I've  
> already installed (e.g., I have mysql and rsync installed from ports  
> on every machine, would they be updated). Perhaps I should be  
> remaking them?

You've only updated the skeleton directories which are used to build 
ports.  You have not updated the ports themselves.

After your portsnap run "pkg_version -L=" and anything marked '<' is out 
of date.

Also consider installing portaudit which tells you about installed ports 
which have security bugs which may affect you.  You could consider only 
updating ports which have security holes, for example.  And you'll at 
least be aware of what security issues might exist even if you don't fix 
them :-)

Investigate portupgrade or portmanager for doing the updating.  I prefer 
the former and it has a good man page.

--Alex