How easy/hard are updates/upgrades?

[Seann Aswell]

I too have had 'freebsd-update fetch upgrade' result in issues, so while 
FreeBSD's binary update process is easy, it isn't bulletproof.

I personally don't recall ever having an issue with DragonFly's source 
updating process, but keep in mind that compiling source is required, so 
on resource constrained systems it can take quite a while.

Having been responsible for supporting various systems remotely in the 
past, your concern is completely understandable. Once you go thru the 
process a few times, you will gain confidence in updating remotely, as 
long as you have a backup snapshot of the OS and someone is onsite in 
case there are issues.

FYI- A few resources about updating constrained systems:
https://marc.info/?l=dragonfly-users&m=149234716521744&w=2
https://umbriel.fr/blog/Upgrading_DragonFly_BSD_hosts_with_a_central_build_server.html 


The other advantage of updating from a central source is that you can 
test with a non-critical machine, and be pretty confident it will work 
on others.


On 1/21/23 12:30, Christoph Harder wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> maybe this question should be extended with "How bulletproof are 
> updates/upgrades?".
>
> I've used FreeBSD as OS for three VPN gateways, but keeping the 
> systems up to date was always a problem.
> Multiple times manual conflict resolution was required. Sometimes 
> remote access to the systems failed while/after an update, causing 
> downtimes and requiring me to go to the systems.
> Now this might not be a FreeBSD problem, I'm certainly no expert.
> Anyway, the result was, that I generally only did updates when I was 
> near the systems and did updates not as often as I would have liked.
> I did the updates by myself, since anytime a manual conflict 
> resolution would be required none of the other users could do it. 
> Ideally updates/upgrades would be so easy that anybody can do it or 
> that they can be automated.
>
> Now to the actual question. How easy/hard/bulletproof are DragonflyBSD 
> updates/upgrades?
>
> https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/Upgrading/ looks super 
> easy, but so did the update/upgrade manual of FreeBSD.
>
> Is the upgrade process on Dragonfly BSD easy enough that you could 
> describe the process to a (non-technical) user over the phone?
>
> Best regards,
> Christoph Harder