Re: Redhat to Freebsd

From: Bill Vermillion (bv_at_wjv.comREMOVE)
Date: 11/07/03 

Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 00:55:02 GMT

In article <33klqvggm1h4ua3d2mfe81d5flbktgp7dk@4ax.com>,
David Douthitt <ssrat@mailbag.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 18:07:00 -0500, "Don" <T u v ix @ace dsl.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Bottom line is I want to run my business and not spend allot of time in
>>researching security updates or in performing kernel or package updates. I
>>essentially want to have access to something
>>similar to RHN errata notification and updates to keep me out of trouble
>>with security issues related
>>to my web servers.
>>
>>What can I expect for my situation in using Freebsd?
>>
>>I assume it is only the Redhat distro that has the ease of RPM installation?
>
>Wrong. SUSE, Conectiva, SCO OpenLinux, PLD, and perhaps Best and
>others all support RPMs natively.
>
>>Are package installation, uninstall and upgrade with FreeBSD as easy
>>unzipping and doing such things as 'make install', 'make clean', etc (or do
>>they have something similar to RPM?).

>FreeBSD uses something called the Ports Tree. The ports tree uses the
>original sources plus patches provided in the Ports Tree to build and
>create and install the appropriate package.

It also uses packages - which use such things as pkg_add.
So you can build from sources with ports, or install binaries
with packages. One nice feature with pkg_add is you do NOT
have to DL the binaries as you do with RPMs [at least the few times
I've used RPMS]. You just set the path to the site with the
package [and if you do it ofen you can set a variable in your
system to it's basically pkg_add -v $PKGPATH <package name>

The plus side is the the pkg_add takes care of all the dependancies
needed and will fetch those, instead of the time you get a notice
installing an RPM that it depends on another package, and that
might still have further dependancies.

So you do have your choice in BSD. I install most with ports, but
on thing like CVSUP which will build Ruby before it can be built, I
will choose the package route.

...

>Updating the ports is easy; updating the base in response to a
>security fix is harder.

If it's not something like the library problems it's as simple as
going to the part of the source tree that has that program
and type make and then make install.

>In Red Hat and other RPM-based distributions, a kernel update just
>requires installation of a new kernel RPM and a reboot to make it
>active. An update to another portion of the base (SSH let's say) only
>requires updating that RPM. If you want to remove telnet and finger
>from the base system, just do a "rpm -e telnet finger."

Very few things in the past year in terms of security have requited
making a new kernel. If you want to remove telnet or finger
from BSD it's just rm /usr/bin/finger or rm /usr/libexec/telnetd

That's a bit harder but since telnet and finger are in the base you
can't do the same as with the RPM based things.

>In FreeBSD, you can't do those things except in add-on packages found
>in the Ports Tree.

But plain old rm works well. 

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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