David's FreeBSD Stuff

This page consists mostly of pointers to more detailed information about what I've been doing with (and, to some extent, to) FreeBSD.

FreeBSD on laptops

Current laptop is a Dell Precision M4800. I track stable/12 & head on it, as well as update its installed ports, daily. Here is a record of the more recent updates. I replaced the disk drive with which it came with a 750GB Seagate Momentus XT 7200rpm drive. I've been generally happy with the performance, but I had access to some surplus SSDs, so the current disk drive is a 960 GB Crucial CT960M500SSD1. I run FreeBSD/amd64 on it, vs. FreeBSD/i386.

Updating machines running FreeBSD

Part of deploying anything in "production" or "mission-critical" use is how to deal with maintenance and upgrades. This applies no less to software than to hardware. Now, in some cases, it may be possible to decide that in the circumstances in question, it makes more sense to "freeze" the software (or maintain it minimally). In others, one might prefer to update the software, but the benefit doesn't appear to be worth the likely disruption. And in other cases, the systems in question might be set up so there is no "single point of failure," and individual components could be taken offline, upgraded, and placed back in service with little risk of user-perceived downtime.

The above are three points along a continuum of tradeoffs. For quite a while, I admit that I left several of my FreeBSD systems at the 2nd of the above points -- upgrading was something that I perceived as too much pain for little gain.

Eventually, I became sufficiently uncomfortable with that approach that I found a rather different point on the continuum. Here is where I have the processes I use documented.

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