9th May 2014
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More noise than signal
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
Posts: 7,975
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- Long term support is not available from the Project. Patches are provided only for the most recent two releases; the release cadence means there is only one year of support.
- Support for older releases would require either self-support or a commercial contract with a company willing to backport fixes.
- Backporting fixes for older releases is time consuming and requires technical skills equivalent to that of an OS developer: significantly more advanced skills than those required for OS administration, including upgrades.
- Upgrading is easy *. Much easier than backporting fixes. The level of skill required is less than that required for installation, since provisioning of storage is eliminated.
- The upgrade script copies new kernels into the root directory and overlays userland libraries (/usr/lib) and utilities (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, ..., ..., ...)
- The /etc and /var structures are not touched by the upgrade script as the *etc*.tgz filesets are excluded.
- The sysmerge(8) tool automates replacement of unmodified /etc and /var configuration files, and revision of locally customized files.
- Third party packages can be updated by issuing a single command **:
# pkg_add -u
* You must review the applicable Upgrade Guide. Some systems may require manual changes for certain applications, or as with 5.4 -> 5.5, there may have been a significant change to the system requiring the admin to take extra steps.
** The $PKG_PATH environment variable must be modified to match the new release.
Last edited by jggimi; 9th May 2014 at 01:57 PM.
Reason: second footnote added
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