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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