How to update like Debian

[Freddie Cash]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 9:02 AM, Denny Schierz <linuxmail at 4lin.net> wrote:

> I think, I do not understand, how to update (security/bugfixes) my 8.2
> machines :-) I searched a lot and tried, what I have found in the docs, but
> I had trouble ...
>
> What I have done (one thing was working, but didn't know, if it is
> correct):
>
>
Updating FreeBSD is done is two separate processes, which can be done
independently of one another.

There is a clear separation between "the base FreeBSD OS" and "third-party
apps installed on top".  This is something that is missing in the land of
the penguin, and tends to trip people up as they switch between FreeBSD and
Linux (in either direction).

To do a binary upgrade of the base OS, you use freebsd-update:
  # freebsd-update fetch
  # freebsd-update update

See the freebsd-update man page for more details and options.

That updates only the base OS (stuff under / and /usr; it does not touch
anything under /usr/local).


There are several different ways to update your installed third-party
software (stuff installed via either pkg_add or the ports tree), depending
on whether or not you want to compile software.  Since you want have a
Debian-like experience, then you want to install via binary packages as much
as possible.

See the man page for pkg_add for information on doing the initial install of
software, including remotely fetching software (this would be similar to
"apt-get install" without any upgrade support).

A nice tool for handling upgrades of binary packages, using only binary
packages, is pkg_upgrade.  This is part of the bsdadminscripts package, so
you'll need to install that first.  Using pkg_add and pkg_upgrade, you do
not even need to install the ports tree (and can even "rm -rf
/usr/ports/*").

That's about as close to a Debian-like experience as you'll get.
-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com