# -RELEASE/-STABLE/RELENG_ and Upgrading



## d3ahtsd00r (Aug 19, 2013)

So I'm very new to the FreeBSD way of things and I'm kind of confused about some things.

First, the naming conventions kind of confuse me and I'm not sure which ones are updated more often and what the difference is between them.

Second, how do I upgrade to different versions? I've seen explanations in a couple different places that say to do:

```
svn checkout svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/stable/9 /usr/src
cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make kernel
make installworld
mergemaster -Ui
reboot
cd /usr/src
make check-old
```
but once I did that, I didn't know how to check if the upgrade actually happened. (`uname -r` still showed "-RELEASE")

Lastly, how do I go about making sure it is patched with software and security updates? I've used freebsd-update but I read that it's meant only for -RELEASE.

Thanks all


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## Kiiski (Aug 19, 2013)

Maybe this Vermadens nice howto would clarify things a little bit:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26140

Also a lot of nice resources can be found from here:

http://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html

Hope this helps


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## SirDice (Aug 19, 2013)

Handbook: 24.5. Tracking a Development Branch


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## wblock@ (Aug 19, 2013)

d3ahtsd00r said:
			
		

> So I'm very new to the FreeBSD way of things and I'm kind of confused about some things.
> 
> First, the naming conventions kind of confuse me and I'm not sure which ones are updated more often and what the difference is between them.



-RELEASE: only gets security patches
-STABLE: everything gets updated



> Second, how do I upgrade to different versions? I've seen explanations in a couple different places that say to do:
> 
> ```
> svn checkout svn://svn.freebsd.org/base/stable/9 /usr/src
> ...



That procedure looks familiar, it is the one I show in Building FreeBSD World And Kernel: The Short Form.  It works, it's the one I use very often.  Possibly the kernel step was missed.



> Lastly, how do I go about making sure it is patched with software and security updates? I've used freebsd-update but I read that it's meant only for -RELEASE.



Use `svn up /usr/src` to get the latest version before rebuilding.  All of the patches are in the source.  When building from source, there's no reason to use freebsd-update(8).


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## d3ahtsd00r (Aug 20, 2013)

@wblock@, that is exactly where I found that procedure. I know I did make kernel the so I'm not sure what happened. 

@Kiiski, that is exactly what I was looking for but Google didn't seem to want to bring that link up. 

Thanks. I'm really looking forward to learning how to use FreeBSD. Linux has been getting boring to me, it's the same thing every six months and I'm not learning anything new.


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