Fwd: Updating the system and ports

[Pongthep Kulkrisada]

Hi Folk,

Further to previous suggestion in this mailing list,
I have just updated from FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE to the latest patch.

I firstly use freebsd-update but it failed ...
# freebsd-update fetch
Lookin up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found
Fetching public key from update4.FreeBSD.org... failed
Fetching public key from update5.FreeBSD.org... failed
Fetching public key from update2.FreeBSD.org... failed
Give up, no remaining mirrors.
(I didn't run script(1), I hard typed from my memory.)

I tried many times, the results were always the same.
I don't know what happen.

So I switch to update from source.
REL_ENG_8_0 is specified in stable-supfile. After csup and buildworld/kernel.
Now I am running 8.0-RELEASE-p2.
But I am expecting 8.0-STABLE-p2. I don't understand.

The handbook did not say anything about the capitalized RELEASE.
At least I did not find it.
I only notice that I always get RELEASE when freshly install from CDs.
But when build from sources sometimes I get RELEASE.
And sometimes I get STABLE.

1. What is the difference between RELEASE and STABLE?

2. After buildworld/kernel finished, I tried freebsd-upgrade again.
Now it works. There are still 20 files to fetch and install.
Only 8 hours between csup all sources and freebsd-upgrade.
Is it normal to have such 20 outstanding files during short period?

3. freebsd-update did not request for mergemaster(8). [edit]
How can we ensure that things in /etc go well?

4. After this step, I would probably run portmaster. sleepy now :-(
I want to know how often you normally update the ``system'' and ``ports''?
If both are normally done EVERYDAY, freebsd-update is relatively fast.
But portmaster is somewhat slow to build all ports from sources.
One may have hundreds ports, if not thousands.
Please give me some hints, what are you normally do?

Thanks,
Pongthep

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