Re: Updating NetBSD binary packages

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell%mumble.net@localhost>]

   Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:06:09 +0100
   From: "Dirk H. Schulz" <dirk.schulz%kinzesberg.de@localhost>

   Googling once more I found pkg_chk.  The man page states that it
   checks against pkgsrc - that does not sound like tool I am looking
   for.

You can run pkg_chk with binary packages only: see the `-b' option.

   Are these thoughts generally un-NetBSD-ish?  Or is there some way
   to smoothly update larger amounts of NetBSD servers?

I build binary packages myself with pkgsrc (and pkg_comp) on a build
host, setting LOCALBASE to /usr/pkg-2009Q4 (for example) and PKG_DBDIR
to /var/db/pkg-2009Q4.  Then, on my other hosts, I mount /usr/pkgsrc
from the build host (using NFS, sshfs, or whatnot), run pkg_add on the
binary packages, and make the local /usr/pkg and /var/db/pkg symlinks
to /usr/pkg-2009Q4 and /var/db/pkg-2009Q4.

Upgrading to a quarterly release of pkgsrc is a matter of building new
binary packages on the build host, running pkg_add everywhere again,
changing the symlinks on the hosts to point to /usr/pkg-2010Q1 &c.,
and perhaps restarting services that were running on the last
quarterly release.

This process has one simple `commit point' (changing the symlinks),
other than restarting services, and can easily be rolled back (by
changing the symlinks back) in case anything goes wrong.

There are some other options listed at
<http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_upgrade_packages>.

(I am not subscribed to this list; please cc me in replies.)