production box: 4.9, 5.1, 5.2+ ???

[Lowell Gilbert]

lee slaughter <lee at slaughters.com> writes:

> I hesitate to ask this because it sounds stupid.
> 
> I went down to the tech book store and bought freeBSD on CD's.
> it happened to be 5.1. I, a neophyte, assumed it was "kosher".
> 
> I bought it and installed it on 2 machines  and pretty much ok so far.
> Now I've been reading about the STABLE and CURRENT branches
> and cvsup and all other kinds of "keeping up".
> 
> What I want is production boxs with of course bug fix and
> security upgrades, but not needing always the latest app releases.
> 
> I've tried to grok the release engineering and all but I don't get it.
> I'm going to put freeBSD on 2 other machines as well,
> but don't know whether
> to install 4.9, use my 5.1 CD's (and then presumably have to
> go to 5.2 + ??? to keep up?), 5.2   or what.  Not to mention the
> 2 already installed.
> 
> I want to keep all 4 machines pretty much in synch.
> 
> thanks for any clarification i can get on:
>     1. which is best "production" version
>     2. what is best essential upkeep mechanism (not so much for apps
>        but for bug fixes in OS and security fixes/patches on essential stuff
>        like OpenSsh)
> 
> thanks much...........

If 5.1 is already installed and working for you, I'd stick with it.  
I would recommend tracking RELENG_5_2, the 5.2 security branch (and
later versions as they come along), but going back to 4.x isn't likely
to make your systems any more stable, given that they're already
working fine.

I would definitely recommend keeping your systems running the same
version as each other.