Runaway ProFTP?

Michael Powell nightrecon at hotmail.com
Sat Dec 11 16:22:44 UTC 2010


Grant Peel wrote:
snip]
> 
> \FYI for anyone that is following my thread on updating one single port: I
> must have a somwhat busted installation. Using port upgrade failed ...
> sorry I did not remember to keep the output, but, I was able to download
> the source from proftpd.org and install it from scratch.
> 

What I do on a fairly regular basis (usually about once a week) is the 
following:

cd to /usr/sup   <- this is where I keep my supfiles and housekeeping

csup -L 2 ports && portsdb -uF && pkgdb -u && portversion

This refreshes the ports tree and downloads the current matching INDEX 
database. Then the package database gets updated and checked and if there 
are no errors portversion runs to identify ports in need of update.

Of course, what to do about the results is left up to the sysadmin. If I am 
inclined to update (usually just a portupgrade -a most of the time) I will 
then consult UPDATING. 

Preparing some kind of fallback in case of failure is a good idea for 
anything in production. I'm lucky enough to have an extra spare hard drive 
in every box to which I can do a dump immediately prior to upgrade. I also 
believe in test bedding stuff first. My 2 servers at home have the same 
services running on them as the 7 I have at work. So I run any updating on 
the two boxen at home first. If that is trouble free I might then do the 
ones at work. If not, the ones at work won't be touched.

One thing I've noticed over the years is portupgrade works best when done 
more frequently  so fewer things get upgraded at any one time. Letting a box 
go for 6 months and needing to update 100 things is more prone to failure. 
Each approach has it's pros and cons. Some shops don't want frequent 
updating because it is more likely to take a production system down, and 
that is perfectly reasonable to the point that old software doesn't have 
exploits.

There have been a few updates to portupgrade itself lately.  But there is a 
pretty fair chance if the command line shown above rolls all the way through 
with zero errors it may be taken as a good sign. Any errors at all and I 
would stop and find out what's wrong before moving on to actually updating 
anything.

-Mike






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