Here's what I want: I want to install RELEASE-8.2, and want to keep the system and packages up to date with security patches only. I want to avoid ports b/c I do not want my machines to start compiling large packages and their dependencies when it has a high load; also, I do not want to deal with broken ports.
Keeping the core system seems simple enough with freebsd-update fetch and freebsd-update install.
How should I keep packages up to date with the latest available from ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8.1-release/Latest/? The portupgrade man page says that the -PP flag may be what I want-- however, it says I need an updated ports tree. That's fine, but what happens if I have Foo-1.0 installed, the ports tree says Foo-1.2 is the newest version, but only Foo-1.1 is available as a package? Will it recognize Foo-1.1 as a higher version? If so, why does it need an updated ports tree?
Is this enough?:
portsnap fetch update
portupgrade -a -PP
(I'm assuming you don't need -r or -R when you have -a, right?)
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8-stable/All/and runs the commands, it will upgrade the packages to match the updated ports collection, but he'll no longer be following RELEASE, instead STABLE. In a nutshell, to get the latest binary packaes, you need to change the repo from RELEASE to STABLE or CURRENT. – Joe Internet Jul 15 '11 at 21:30pkgdb -Fin there before running portupgrade, just as a precaution. – Joe Internet Jul 15 '11 at 21:32-amakes portupgrade check all packages, but it won't upgrade dependencies/dependents without the appropriate-ror-Rflags. Not sure about upgrading with packages, but you may need to upgrade like a pirate (-arR) to cover all the bases... – voretaq7 Jul 25 '11 at 16:43