Index: head/share/doc/handbook/current.sgml =================================================================== --- head/share/doc/handbook/current.sgml (revision 17310) +++ head/share/doc/handbook/current.sgml (revision 17311) @@ -1,164 +1,162 @@ - + Staying current with FreeBSD

Contributed by &a.jkh;. What is FreeBSD-current?

FreeBSD-current is, quite literally, nothing more than a daily snapshot of the working sources for FreeBSD. These include work in progress, experimental changes and transitional mechanisms that may or may not be present in the next official release of the software. While many of us compile almost daily from FreeBSD-current sources, there are periods of time when the sources are literally un-compilable. These problems are generally resolved as expeditiously as possible, but whether or not FreeBSD-current sources bring disaster or greatly desired functionality can literally be a matter of which part of any given 24 hour period you grabbed them in! Under certain circumstances we will sometimes make binaries for parts of FreeBSD-current available, but only because we are interested in getting something tested, not because we are in the business of providing binary releases of current. If we do not offer, please do not ask! It takes far too much time to do this as a general task. Who needs FreeBSD-current?

FreeBSD-current is made generally available for 3 primary interest groups: Members of the FreeBSD group who are actively working on some part of the source tree and for whom keeping `current' is an absolute requirement. Members of the FreeBSD group who are active testers, willing to spend time working through problems in order to ensure that FreeBSD-current remains as sane as possible. These are also people who wish to make topical suggestions on changes and the general direction of FreeBSD. Peripheral members of the FreeBSD (or some other) group who merely wish to keep an eye on things and use the current sources for reference purposes (e.g. for reading, not running). These people also make the occasional comment or contribute code. What is FreeBSD-current NOT?

A fast-track to getting pre-release bits because you heard there's some cool new feature in there and you want to be the first on your block to have it. A quick way of getting bug fixes. In any way ``officially supported'' by us. We do our best to help people genuinely in one of the 3 ``legitimate'' FreeBSD-current categories, but we simply do not - have the time to help every person who jumps into FreeBSD-current - with more enthusiasm than knowledge of how to deal with - experimental system software. This is not because we are mean and - nasty people who do not like helping people out (we would not even be - doing FreeBSD if we were), it is literally because we cannot answer - 400 messages a day and actually work on FreeBSD! I am sure - that, if given the choice between having us answer lots of questions or - continuing to improve FreeBSD, most of you would vote for us - improving it. + have the time to provide tech support for it. + This is not because we are mean and nasty people who do not like + helping people out (we would not even be doing FreeBSD if we were), + it is literally because we cannot answer 400 messages a day + and actually work on FreeBSD! I am sure that, if given + the choice between having us answer lots of questions or continuing to + improve FreeBSD, most of you would vote for us improving it. Using FreeBSD-current

Join the &a.current and the &a.cvsall . This is not just a good idea, it is essential. If you are not on the FreeBSD-current mailing list you will not see the comments that people are making about the current state of the system and thus will probably end up stumbling over a lot of problems that others have already found and solved. Even more importantly, you will miss out on potentially critical information (e.g. ``Yo, Everybody! Before you rebuild /usr/src, you must rebuild the kernel or your system will crash horribly!"). The cvs-all mailing list will allow you to see the commit log entry for each change as it is made along with any pertinent information on possible side-effects. To join these lists, send mail to &a.majordomo and specify: subscribe current subscribe cvs-all In the body of your message. Optionally, you can also say `help' and Majordomo will send you full help on how to subscribe and unsubscribe to the various other mailing lists we support. Grab the sources from ftp.FreeBSD.ORG. You can do this in three ways: Use the facility. Unless you have a good TCP/IP connection at a flat rate, this is the way to do it. Use the CMU program (Software Update Protocol). This is the second most recommended method, since it allows you to grab the entire collection once and then only what has changed from then on. Many people run sup from cron and keep their sources up-to-date automatically. Use ftp. The source tree for FreeBSD-current is always "exported" on: - We also use `wu-ftpd' which allows compressed/tar'd grabbing of whole trees. e.g. you see: usr.bin/lex You can do: ftp> cd usr.bin ftp> get lex.tar.Z And it will get the whole directory for you as a compressed tar file. Essentially, if you need rapid on-demand access to the source and communications bandwidth is not a consideration, use sup or ftp. Otherwise, use CTM. If you are grabbing the sources to run, and not just look at, then grab all of current, not just selected portions. The reason for this is that various parts of the source depend on updates elsewhere, and trying to compile just a subset is almost guaranteed to get you into trouble. Before compiling current, read the Makefile in /usr/src carefully. You should at least run a `make world' the first time through as part of the upgrading process. Reading the &a.hackers will keep you up-to-date on other bootstrapping procedures that sometimes become necessary as we move towards the next release. Be active! If you are running FreeBSD-current, we want to know what you have to say about it, especially if you have suggestions for enhancements or bug fixes. Suggestions with accompanying code are received most enthusiastically! Index: head/share/doc/handbook/lists.sgml =================================================================== --- head/share/doc/handbook/lists.sgml (revision 17310) +++ head/share/doc/handbook/lists.sgml (revision 17311) @@ -1,61 +1,61 @@ - + "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> "> + "> "> Index: head/share/doc/handbook/sup.sgml =================================================================== --- head/share/doc/handbook/sup.sgml (revision 17310) +++ head/share/doc/handbook/sup.sgml (revision 17311) @@ -1,131 +1,137 @@ - + SUP

Contributed by &a.jkh; and &a.gclarkii;. SUP is a network based software update tool developed at CMU. The purpose of this document is get the beginner up and running with sup. Getting setup -

Starting with FreeBSD 2.1, sup is supplied as part of the base -system and no separate installation is required. +

SUP gets the information it needs to run from a configuration file +called a supfile. There are different example supfiles provided +for different source releases of FreeBSD. The + file, for example, +contains sup information for the latest standard FreeBSD source +distributions - it tells sup what collections it will be updating +and/or installing and where they go. Someone using this particular +supfile is said to be supping . +

For ports, please have a look at +.

+If you are interested in obtaining the + files +that make up the source tree, refer to +.

+If you would rather track changes to the -stable branch, refer to + instead. -SUP gets the information it needs to run from a configuration file -called a supfile. This file should be found in -/usr/share/examples/sup/standard-supfile for the standard -distributions. -This file tells sup what collections it will be updating -and/or installing and where they go. This supfile will sup the current source -collection. For ports please have a look at -/usr/share/examples/sup/ports-supfile. If you are interested -in obtaining the cvs files that make up the source tree, refer to -/usr/share/examples/sup/cvs-supfile. If you would rather -track changes to the -stable release, refer to -/usr/share/examples/sup/stable-supfile -instead. - If you are inside the United States, you may also uncomment the `secure' and `eBones' collection lines to grab the DES code. If you are outside the U.S., you should NOT sup this code from sup.FreeBSD.ORG as this will violate U.S. export restrictions. Instead you should use the -secure-supfile found within the above directory. This will + in the sup examples directory. This will connect you to the international sup site that contains a secure distribution. Any distributions you do not wish to receive can be commented out with a # at the beginning of the distribution line. Please consult the file -/usr/share/examples/sup/README + for a list of alternate sup servers. The default sup server (sup.FreeBSD.ORG) listed in the above example files is currently overloaded and any traffic that can be transfered to a different host will help relieve some of the strain. Once this is setup, you are ready to go. To start sup type: sup supfile If you wish to see what sup is doing "verbosely", give it the -v option, like so: sup -v supfile Thats all there is to it! Remember that if you are running current, which is what you will have if you sup with the standard-supfile, please join the &a.current . You should also be sure to read for important information on just what we can and cannot do for you as a -current user. If you are using the stable-supfile, please -join the &a.stable and read -. +join the &a.stable and read +. Description of FreeBSD SUP distributions

For the main FreeBSD distribution using the standard-supfile: src-base: /usr/src/... misc files at the top of /usr/src src-bin: /usr/src/bin user and system binaries src-secure: /usr/src/secure DES Sources (US/Canada ONLY) src-eBones: /usr/src/eBones Kerberos and DES (US/Canada ONLY) src-etc: /usr/src/etc system files src-games: /usr/src/games games src-gnu: /usr/src/gnu sources under the GNU Public License src-include: /usr/src/include include files src-sys: /usr/src/sys kernel sources src-lib: /usr/src/lib libraries src-libexec: /usr/src/libexec system binaries src-share: /usr/src/share various shared resources src-sbin: /usr/src/sbin single user system binaries src-usrbin: /usr/src/usr.bin user binaries src-usrsbin: /usr/src/usr.sbin system binaries

For the international FreeBSD distribution using the secure-supfile: src-secure: /usr/src/secure DES Sources src-eBones: /usr/src/eBones Kerberos and DES

And for the ports collection: ports-base: /usr/ports/... misc files at the top of /usr/ports ports-archivers: /usr/ports/archivers archiving tools ports-audio: /usr/ports/audio sound support ports-benchmarks: /usr/ports/benchmarks benchmarks ports-cad: /usr/ports/cad CAD tools ports-comms: /usr/ports/comms communication software ports-databases: /usr/ports/databases databases ports-devel: /usr/ports/devel development utilities ports-editors: /usr/ports/editors editors ports-emulators: /usr/ports/emulators emulators for other OSes ports-games: /usr/ports/games games ports-graphics: /usr/ports/graphics various graphics utilities ports-japanese: /usr/ports/japanese Japanese software. ports-lang: /usr/ports/lang programming languages ports-mail: /usr/ports/mail mail software ports-math: /usr/ports/math numerical computation software ports-misc: /usr/ports/misc miscellaneous utilities ports-net: /usr/ports/net networking software ports-news: /usr/ports/news USENET news software ports-plan9: /usr/ports/plan9 various programs from Plan9 ports-print: /usr/ports/print printing software ports-russian: /usr/ports/russian Russian software ports-security: /usr/ports/security ``security'' utilities, for better or for worse ports-shells: /usr/ports/shells various UN*X shells ports-sysutils: /usr/ports/sysutils system utilities ports-www: /usr/ports/www software related to the world wide web ports-x11: /usr/ports/x11 X11 software

If you want to keep updated on the original source of the ports, you can also add this to your supfile. But note that this collection is enormous, and unless you are an ftp site mirroring the entire FreeBSD tree (but cannot use ``mirror'' for some reason), you (and us) are much better off not using sup to collect these: ports-distfiles: /usr/ports/distfiles original tarballs