On 2003.05.20 23:43 Richard Rauch wrote:

>  * The laptop is a 233MHz plain Pentium; no speed demon by present
>    standards.  Should I consider building -current daily?=20
Well. -current likes to be in a non-buildable state quite often (at
least to my experience [1]) so I _try_ to build every day. "build.sh -u"
helps speeding up this... If I get a build for one architecture done, I
like to rebuild it for some other architectures and distribute it acros
my machine zoo.=20

>  (I understand that the
>    build may break---though if need be I can roll back to 1.6[.1] or
>    a snapshot or the like.  Or should I maintain a thorough system
>    backup for re-installing?=20
Build a full release. Install the new kernel, reboot to single user,
untar the distribution sets (maybe excluding etc.tgz to save your system
configuration) and save the distribution sets. When you do the next
update and it fails, simply roll back the old distribution sets. An
alternative / partition for rescue purposes may be usefull for this...

>    is tar good for a complete
>    system backup, or should I consider using something else?)
AFAIK dump(8) / restore(8) are the way to go. I read in a FreeBSD FAQ
(Handbook?) a long time ago that only dump(8) / restore(8) are able to
preserve all filesystem attributes.=20

>    I have the means to set up my own repository, but am not sure how
>    I would go about tracking *that* to the real repository to keep
>    myself in synch.  Is that the way to go? =20
I use rsync to get a local copy of the complete repository as I do build
of -release also. I don't have local changes to -current.

[1] I do cross builds from i386, sparc64 and alpha to sparc64, sparc,
alpha, vax, prep, macppc and sometimes sun3, pmax. I found that gcc
(2.95.3) doesn't like to do cross builds e.g. from sparc64 and alpha to
powerpc based machines.... So my "unusual" cross building practice is a
bit more failure prone.=20
--=20


tsch=FC=DF,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/