On Friday 01 February 2008, Aaron wrote: > I was wanting to set up an antispam/anti-virus mail system and in the > past i've always used postfix as my mta. I have read a few posts on > the list where people suggest sticking w/the openbsd default, > sendmail. I'm considering doing this save one question. I know that > when you modify things (i'm just not sure what) you have to recompile > them. This will make upgrading considerable more difficult. > > So lets say i start w/the base install and change my rc.conf.local to > point at sendmail.cf , edit the appropriate files in the src > directory. Things like, sending mail as @mydomain.com instead of > @myhost.mydomain.com, smart hosts, and whatever else needs to be > changed. When i update or upgrade my system, am i going to need to > manually go back every time and recreate the steps to get my mail > system working again? Does the openbsd-proto.mc get overwritten > every time i update the source via cvs. I just need this for > sendmail now, but as a general question: > > What changes to configs/files etc, in the base system would dictate > that a separate rebuild of that component after an update or upgrade? > > > Thanks in advance, > > Aaron Martinez
First off, since there is often confusion, an "upgrade" means there is a change in OS version number (i.e. from 4.1 to 4.2). In contrast, with an "update" there is no change of version number (i.e. you've compiled the most recent -STABLE branch and are installing it). When you do a system update or upgrade, your /etc files are left alone, preserving your changes. When doing an "update" there is usually no need to make any changes to your /etc files. When doing an "upgrade" you will be instructed to manually make a few version specific changes to /etc files but they are fairly trivial and can always be found in the "Upgrade Guide" on the http://www.openbsd.org/faq/ page (for example the most recent upgrade guide is here: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade42.html ). The manual changes you will need to make are mostly due to changes in file formats, API's and similar (such as improvements/modifications to pf.conf syntax). These format changes are documented in the "Upgrade Guide" so unless there is a change to the format of sendmail config files, you probably won't need to touch your customized config files (as stated, your originals are preserved during the upgrade). kind regards, JCR
