Solved freebsd-update remote switch syntax and functionality unclear

[Jason_25]

I am really suprised I am having trouble with Freebsd-update. Each time I do system adminstration on FreeBSD I take extensive notes and each time the notes fail to deliver for me.

Let's talk about the handbook and manual first. I am looking at this page which is what popped up when searching for issues related to freebsd-update.

Chapter 26. Updating and Upgrading FreeBSD

Information about how to keep a FreeBSD system up-to-date with freebsd-update or Git, how to rebuild and reinstall the entire base system, etc

docs.freebsd.org

A major problem is the prose-like way the FreeBSD handbook is arranged. On my system with it's meager 1366x768 resolution that one section of the handbook is around 80 pages long. There is also no information at all on the remote switch for freebsd-update. The manual has a pathetic one line description of the switch with no further information. That is just plain inadequate documentation.

Has anyone checked the performance of the FreeBSD handbook with the Otter Browser on FreeBSD? It is incredibly bad on my computer freezing everything up. Once again I am running into system requirements related issues on even browsing the handbook it seems. In other words my system does not have enough strength to even properly read the manual. This is punishment.

Let's talk briefly about my absolutely amazing poor system performance.

Compounding this problem is my system continues to have the multi years long problem of running out of RAM constantly with 8 GB. I have disliked nearly every second of using this computer because of the continuous and neverending RAM issues. Searching for an issue rewards me with a locked up system. In the future I would only use a FreeBSD system with 64 GB or more RAM at minimum.

CPU performance in all applications is also bad. I hate to sound like a broken record but this is a recurring theme with this system and FreeBSD.

Now let's talk about the functionality of freebsd-update. There appears to be no error checking on the remote switch, no way to divine what the current supported version of FreeBSD is, 2 confusing and equally not properly working forms for the remote switch, and no relevant information shown by the debug switch.

As for the remote switch this works because there are apparently no error checks:
sudo freebsd-update -r santaclaus upgrade
What is the santaclaus distribution going to be like? Christmas themed maybe?
I can apparently even downgrade to an earlier version. That should not be allowed.

As for the "current" version: There is no way to figure out what to upgrade to. Pkg won't download packages because of a mismatched kernel version so an upgrade is definitely necessary. Freebsd-update should know what the latest version is and tell you in plain english.

As for the 2 forms:
Form 1 is
sudo freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.1-RELEASE
Form 2 is
sudo freebsd-update -r 11.1-RELEASE upgrade
There should only be one supported way to do this. One of these methods should throw an error message.

As for the debug switch:
sudo freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.1-RELEASE -v debug
Debug shows almost no extra information. It should show clearly what version we are on and what version we are trying to upgrade to.

As you can see I have distilled my current FreeBSD experience into this post. I really cannot separate my performance issues from my functionality issues because they go hand in hand in the sense that everytime I have a problem the researching steps I take aggravate the already existing performance issues on the system creating a situation I would not wish upon someone sentenced to death.

 

[zirias@]

Maybe just clean this massive fog of pointless ranting and tell us what your actual problem is?

To just clarify the obvious misunderstanding, there's no "remote" switch. The manpage makes it very clear -r is shorthand for "release":

     -r newrelease  Specify the new release (e.g., 11.2-RELEASE) to which
                    freebsd-update should upgrade (upgrade command only).

 

[SirDice]

Form 1 is
sudo freebsd-update upgrade -r 11.1-RELEASE
Form 2 is
sudo freebsd-update -r 11.1-RELEASE upgrade
There should only be one supported way to do this. One of these methods should throw an error message.

No. It's both the same form. Order of arguments and/or options is irrelevant in this case.

Compounding this problem is my system continues to have the multi years long problem of running out of RAM constantly with 8 GB. I have disliked nearly every second of using this computer because of the continuous and neverending RAM issues. Searching for an issue rewards me with a locked up system. In the future I would only use a FreeBSD system with 64 GB or more RAM at minimum.

Don't know what the issue is here but I've successfully used FreeBSD on machines with 1 GB. Obviously not in combination with ZFS in that case, although ZFS shouldn't really cause any major issues (it just won't perform very well due to a severe lack of ARC).

 

[zirias@]

Order of arguments and/or options is irrelevant in this case.

The most widespread canonical order is [flags] [arguments], and for tools that have sub-commands [global flags] [global arguments] [command] [flags] [arguments]. Still I've never seen anyone complain about a tool implementing a more flexible commandline parser that's able to accept different orders as well. As long as it's unambiguous (and, it is, in this case), why should it ever be a problem?

Edit: That's one example of what I meant with "pointless ranting"… (another one would be a complaint about a handbook(!) using "prose-style" ... well sure, a handbook is there to guide you, manpages are the place for reference-style docs!)

 

[Jason_25]

Zirias -

As for the problems, I think I clearly laid out 3 major issues. The documentation being lacking on this point, my own system performance being lacking in troubleshooting the problem and the problems with freebsd-update. The third problem I expanded into 4 distinct subsections.

As for the commandline argument FreeBSD usually has one good way of doing things instead of multiple different not so good ways to do something. This is part of what makes FreeBSD different from Linux. It would be more consistent and less confusing particularly in situations like this. It's a problem when nothing seems to work right. There was no need for the programmer of this tool to try to be clever enough to handle every situation.

As for the size of the rant it is only less than a page. Really nothing compared to the long winded rambling of the FreeBSD handbook.

As for what exactly the switch is called I am pretty sure I have seen it referred to as a remote switch but terminology is beside the point here.

You didn't address all of my points but just cherry picked the ones you found convenient. Why did you have to confuse the thread further by posting twice?

SirDice -

I think most of us here have installed FreeBSD on lesser hardware. If you all you want to do is tinker than that is fine. What I am saying is that I cannot use such a computer as a main computer or for any kind of research. This is disappointing because I feel I could slip by with lesser hardware with a different OS.

As for the switch ordering, see my previous post but I feel that is an engineering decision that could go either way.

This is really really frustrating to have this basic tool not working correctly. To further clarify, anything typed behind -r results in the same behavior. Whether it is 12.4-RELEASE or santaclaus. It does not matter it does the same thing.

 

[Jason_25]

Ok I figured it out.

When freebsd-update asks if what you have installed looks correct, this is not the point that it checks for errors in the remote or release or whatever it is switch. After pressing yes, it then continues and errors out when you have specified a random name like santaclaus. Only when you specify a correct release will it actually upgrade. I could have just tried this earlier but I did not want to break anything. I really need to get this finished for a project and I did not want to be going in reverse.

As for not automatically knowing what release to upgrade to I think I can understand that. There is no "correct" answer here because people may want to do different things. Even with Debian Linux you need to know what words to put into the sources.list file to upgrade for example. So I was being too hard on FreeBSD on this particular point.

This system is still too slow but I am going to live with it. I am not using the world's slowest BSD system because I am poor. As I have explained in the past this system only draws about 15 watts under a full load with max monitor brightness. Thus I can keep computing indefinitely during a disaster with a little bit of backup power planning.

Problem solved.