On 2 March 2010 00:04, Mike McCarty <mike.mcca...@sbcglobal.net> wrote: > It occurs to me that, since LFS is not exactly a supported > distribution in the classic sense of the term, that keeping > it up to date might be a bit interesting. What is the > recommended process? How does one know when, and what? > > Simply rebuilding each time there is a new release, especially when > one has a BLFS system, might be a bit much.
To find out about known vulnerabilities, I subscribe to lwn.net. It's also useful to see what is happening in xorg and the big two desktop environments. For gnome and kde, there is perhaps some point to NOT building in /usr if you want to keep a system running and still current. Wherever you are looking at vulnerabilities, remember to check that you are indeed using the dodgy version - some of the vulnerabilities, particularly in debian/ubuntu, are only for old versions. Personally, I _try_ to keep a system in use for between 6 months and a year (so, scripts are essential). I take the simple route - if the toolchain *needs* to be rebuilt, build a new system. Where I've got a batch of things using gecko (until gnome-2.28 epiphany, maybe yelp) I don't upgrade xulrunner beyond point releases (so depending on my timing, the system might not last as long as I intended). Otherwise, I only try newer versions if a bugfix or extra functionality looks useful. For xorg, I tend not to upgrade once the system is working reliably. When I do an upgrade, I often create a script for the upgrade, based on the build script. This almost makes upgrading the lizard manageable (barring recurrent breakages on ppc/ppc64 in newer nss/nspr or demands to upgrade nss/nspr where I'm still using separate versions :) Maybe I should also add that some of my systems have a far shorter lifespan, e.g. the one I built in December will soon be discarded because printing is broken - hopefully, using cups-1.3 instead of (1.4 followed by 1.3) in my current build will solve that particular problem. For the "oh, that bug was fixed in the next release" issues, you're generally on your own. So, apart from rebuilding if you want to upgrade the toolchain, it really is "your distro, your rules" and I'm sure everyone treats it differently. ĸen (just about to try booting 6.6-ish) -- After tragedy, and farce, "OMG poneys!" -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
