Best way to keep my system up to date with the latest ports

[churchi]

Hi all,

I hope this is in the correct section. I have had quite a number of issues over the past day with upgrading my box that i hadn't upgraded for around 6 months. I was wondering what is the easiest way to keep all of my packages up to date on a regular basis? i am happy to kick it off as a manual command, just want to try and stick to one way for upgrading.

i used to run the command:

portsnap fetch update && portupgrade -apPDR --batch

however over the past day i have reinstalled all of my ports and upgraded to 8.1 in the mean time with the following command:

portsnap fetch update && portmaster -a

Which way do you all use to update your system and install all the necessary ports that have upgrades available? i am happy to recompile the individual upgrades for the ports every time if thats the best way.

cheers.

 

[wblock@]

Upgrading FreeBSD Ports is an article I wrote recently to try to cover the most important points of keeping ports updated. As usual, feedback is welcome.

 

[renice]

If you want to handle your system with packages only there's is a helpful tool at sysutils/bsdadminscripts called pkg_upgrade

 

[ahavatar]

Upgrading FreeBSD Ports is an article I wrote recently to try to cover the most important points of keeping ports updated. As usual, feedback is welcome.

It would be great if there's a second part of the article for lazy people like me who prefers pre-compiled binaries(packages) if available.

 

[wblock@]

It would be great if there's a second part of the article for lazy people like me who prefers pre-compiled binaries(packages) if available.

Thanks, but I almost never use packages, so have little useful experience with them.

 

[DutchDaemon]

Look again at post #3, or use the -PP flag to either portupgrade(1) or portmaster(8).

 

[dave]

Add something like this to your crontab to keep your ports tree up to date automatically, so you don't have to wait for the download and extract while working:

# Update the Ports Tree: Weekly
0       3       *       *       6       root    /usr/sbin/portsnap cron update > /dev/null 2>&1

I also send an email with a list of ports needing updates via crontab:

# List Updated Ports: Weekly
44      4       *       *       6       root    /usr/local/sbin/portmaster -L |grep -i "new version" | mail -s "`hostname -s`: Port Update" you@yourdomain.com

I always use sysutils/screen in case I get disconnected during a lengthy upgrade process:

$ screen -S portup

Something like this will usually do the trick:

$ sudo portmaster -badH

[CTRL]-a then d will detach your screen session so you can do other stuff. To reattach, use:

$ screen -rS portup

I prefer portmaster to portupgrade. I have simply had more success with it.

 

[DutchDaemon]

Leave the system crontab (/etc/crontab) well alone, because system upgrades may touch/alter it. If you want root to run a job, use root's own crontab (crontab -e as the root user). This goes for all system users, btw.