newbie upgrading question

[Matthew Seaman]

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 01:17:04PM -0400, Brian Smith wrote:

> I have been working with FreeBSD for about a month now, and it is my first
> foray into the BSD/UNIX/Linux world.  I have a question about upgrading.  I
> have tried several different ways to go about upgrading, and still can't
> seem to get the desired results.  I started out with a 4.8 install from
> ftp.freebsd.org.  My end goal is to build a FreeBSD firewall machine based
> on 4.8-STABLE.  When I put RELENG_4_8 in my supfile,
> download/recompile/etc., uname -a still shows the version at 4.8-RELEASE.
> When I cvsup with RELENG_4 in my supfile, I got upgraded to 4.10-STABLE.  Is
> there any way to upgrade just to 4.8-STABLE?  Am I going about this the
> wrong way?

You seem to be a little confused about the meaning of those CVS tags,
and how they translate into the OS version name.

    RELENG_4_8 marks the 4.8-RELEASE branch.  That starts out with the
    4.8-RELEASE version you installed, but after you cvsup'd and went
    through the process of building and installing world, you would
    actually have had 4.8-RELEASE-p22.  The 'p22' is a significant
    part of the name, showing that it is 22 patchlevels beyond the
    original release.

    RELENG_4 marks the 4-STABLE branch.  OS names along this branch
    all have the major version number 4 but *aren't* tied to any
    particular minor version number. Those change about every four
    months.  Yes, a 4.8-STABLE OS did exist, for a few months after
    4.8-RELEASE came out.  That was back between April and August
    2003.  Then that code branch was successively relabelled (over the
    course of a few weeks) as 4.9-PRERELEASE, 4.9-RC, etc. until for a
    vanishingly short time it was technically 4.9-RELEASE and then
    became 4.9-STABLE.  At which it remained until a few weeks ago
    when it became 4.10-BETA, etc. etc. until right now, you get
    4.10-STABLE.  4.10-RELEASE hasn't quite happened yet: any day now
    though.

You can see how the OS name has changed over time along the RELENG_4
branch by looking at the diffs between successive versions on this
page:

    http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/conf/newvers.sh?f=u&only_with_tag=RELENG_4&logsort=date

OS versions labelled 'STABLE' actually come from a *development*
branch.  The name does not imply that the code will remain unmodified
(which is what 'STABLE' does mean to some other projects), but that
the system will run stably and reliably.  On the other hand 'RELEASE'
does imply precisely that there won't be any major changes to the
system beyond what is necessary to fix security or some other major
bugs (although major non-security bugfixes generally result in a whole
new point release, eg 4.6.2-RELEASE or 5.2.1-RELEASE). Those two types
of branch are in contrast to 'CURRENT' which is the bleeding edge of
the latest development and which can be completely unbuildable at
times as new code gets shaken down into the system.

What you probably want is to build your firewall box using
4.8-RELEASE-p22, and carry on tracking the RELENG_4_8 branch for
security updates.  The length of time the 4.8-RELEASE branch would be
supported was recently extended until about a year from now.
4.9-RELEASE and 4.10-RELEASE will be supported for the standard 1 year
after release date (ie. a year from about now for 4.10-RELEASE),
unless some more extensions get added.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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