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System Configuration—Keeping it UpdatedJust like csup, the portsnap updates are incremental, and there is no need to fetch thewhole ports tree every time you want to update it. When you run portsnap for thefirst time, it downloads a compressed copy of a ports tree to /var/db/portsnap. Thenext time you update the tree, one or more binary diffs of the tree willbe downloaded.Binary diffs are created using Colin Percival's bsdiff tool. The bsdiff isthe same as the original diff(1) utility, except for the fact that it usessophisticated algorithms to compare two binary files and creates smallbinary patch files that can be applied later, using bspatch utility. Thesetools were created with the intention of providing security patches to theFreeBSD binaries rather than for re-compiling the binaries from the sourcecode. The freebsd-update(8) utility also uses the same tools to applysecurity patches to the system's binaries.You should first download the ports tree. To do this, you should run portsnap withthe fetch argument as shown here:# portsnap fetchOnce the ports tree is downloaded, you can update the live ports tree (that livesin /usr/ports) with recently downloaded ports snapshot, using the followingportsnap's update command:# portsnap updateIf this is the first time you are updating the ports tree using the portsnap,you should run the portsnap extract before running the portsnapupdate. The portsnap cannot update the ports tree that was not createdusing portsnap (for example, it cannot be updated using CVSup)Security AdvisoriesAn important part of the day to day life of a system administrator is to track thelatest security issues and bug fixes for the operating systems that he runs on hisservers. There are a number of well-known security related mailing lists in whichyou can find the latest update of the security issues in different operating systemsand softwares. The FreeBSD project also has a mailing list dedicated to the securityupdates and advisories for the end users. The freebsd-security-notificationsis a low traffic mailing list that contains the latest security information related tothe FreeBSD operating system and the included softwares. If you are concernedabout the security of your systems, you are strongly advised to subscribe to thefreebsd-security-notifications mailing list at http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-security-notifications.[ 36 ]