How To keep ports collection up to date in FreeBSD
The FreeBSD Ports collection is a package management system for FreeBSD which provides an easy way of installing software packages on the FreeBSD operating system.
1. Updating the ports collection
a.) Using CVSup method
This is a quick method of getting and keeping your ports collection up to date using cvsup protocol. Make sure /usr/ports is empty before you run cvsup for the first time.
If you never updated ports collection you have to install cvsup utility:
# pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui
Update ports collection:
# cvsup -L 2 -h cvsup.freebsd.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile
Above step will take some time to fetch the files.
b.) Using portsnap method
Portsnap is an alternative system for distributing the ports collection.
Install portsnap with the following command:
# pkg_add -r portsnap

FreeBSD: How To Upgrade FreeBSD 7 to 8 Stable Release
FreeBSD 7.x allows upgrade of existing installation to FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE. Since this is a major version upgrade, it is recommended that you backup your data, database and configuration files.
This guide will walk a user through updating his source to follow FreeBSD's stable branch. Please make a full backup of the current system before following this guide.
STEP 1: Syncing the source tree
- cvsup installation and configuration
# cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui
# make install clean
OR
# pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui
Copy the sample supfile for Stable to /usr/local/etc/stable-supfile:
# cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile /usr/local/etc/
Edit file and set host name which specifies the server host which will supply the file updates to your system.
*default host=cvsup1.us.FreeBSD.org
Set release tag to stable 8:
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_8
Run cvsup to download the latest stable source:
# cvsup -L 2 /usr/local/etc/stable-supfile
When the cvsup has completed, change to the /usr/src directory
