Re: make release again

[Andre Lucas <lucas@ae-35.net>]

Clarence Chan wrote:
<snip> 
> - update the /etc, /var and /dev/MAKEDEV by hand
> 
> I would like to know how to update the /etc and the /var.  Is there any
> guideline to follow.  Thanks

You'll find the file etc28.tgz (or etc29.tgz for -current) in your
release directory. That contains the files created by 'make
distrib-etc-root-var', and means that you always have them on-hand even
on systems where you don't have the build tools and source installed.

I unpack the etc28.tgz files into a fresh subdirectory of my $HOME.

For /etc, it's pretty simple to update. I do 'diff -urd /etc
~/newconf/etc | less' and work through the output, reconciling the
differences. In most cases, that consists either making small additions
or deletions to existing files, or copying over files and directories
not present in your old version. Be careful to get the permissions
right.

I just copy over the new dev/MAKEDEV to my 'real' /dev and run 'cd /dev
; ./MAKEDEV all'. Similarly, unless I've made changes to the dotfiles in
/ and /root, I just copy the new versions over.

Updating /var could be approached the same way as /etc, but it usually
needs a bit more care - a lot of stuff in /var doesn't actually need
upgraded, and you have to use your judgement a lot more. I use 'diff
-urd --exclude logs --exclude www /var ~/newconf/var | less' to cut down
the diff output to a useful level.

I upgrade Apache manually (usually for me a case of isolating my own
config additions/deletions, replacing /var/www with the new version and
re-applying my changes. YMMV. The diff of /log is unlikely to be useful!

Though this procedure is a bit of work, I'm very glad that OpenBSD
doesn't try to automagically upgrade stuff for me. By doing this
manually, I get to see where changes have been made to the distribution,
and I have some confidence that things are upgraded the way they should
be. (Oh, and my filesystem doesn't get filled with, say, .rpmsave files
;) )

Hope this helps,
-Andre