When you use the ‘nice’ command inside of csh or tcsh, you need to mind that you give the full path to the binary so you dont use the built-in ‘nice’ command.

# /usr/bin/nice -n 10 {your update command}

What i use is:

# /usr/bin/nice -n 10 portupgrade -aRrP

Man page for ‘nice’: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nice&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.0-RELEASE&format=html

Install cvsup:

# cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui/
# make install

install fastest cvsup:

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fastest_cvsup/
# make install
# fastest_cvsup -c us

Replace “us” with your country if it’s different. copy the default supfile to our own before editing.

# cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile /etc/stable-supfile
# cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile /etc/ports-supfile

edit both of them and change the

*default host=

to the fastest cvsup server from the “fastest cvsup”

then update the ports

# cvsup -L2 -g /etc/ports-supfile
# cvsup -L2 -g /etc/stable-supfile

Then i guess we try to build the world. see if something breaky.

# cd /usr/src
# make buildworld

Recompiled kernel. I have my own kernel called “MYSPARC2″. Yours might just be “GENERIC”

# cd /usr/src
# make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYSPARC2
# make installkernel KERNCONF=MYSPARC2

rebooted into single user mode then:

# mount -u /
# mount -a -t ufs
# swapon -a

Now you are ready to install the new world.

# cd /usr/src
# make installworld

After that was done, mergemaster to update your configs:

mergemaster -v

Then used portmaster to upgrade all of the ports.

# portmaster -a

Basically everything i know about BSD comes from or stems from something I’ve read at freebsdmadeeasy.com

source: http://www.freebsdmadeeasy.com/tutorials/freebsd/updating-freebsd-with-cvsup.php

1. ntpdate. This is manual. To run a time sync manually, just run

ntpdate -b pool.ntp.org

You can replace pool.ntp.org with whatever you want. To tell it to run whenever the system is booted, add this to /etc/rc.conf:

ntpdate_enable="YES"
ntpdate_hosts="[your ntp server]"

This works, but if you don’t reboot often, could be unreliable.

2. ntdp. ntpd just runs all the time and keeps you nsync with internet time servers. You would want to use this for servers that you don’t reboot all the time. for this:

create an /etc/ntpd.conf file:

server pool.ntp.org
driftfile /etc/ntp.drift
logfile /var/log/ntpd.log

you can start ntpd manually:

ntpd

and/or add a startup entry for it in /etc/rc.conf:

ntpd_enable="YES"

I recommend setting up both of these on servers. Ntpdate will snap your system to a good point before you begin synchronizing with ntpd. ntpd by itself will take a lot longer to get you synced up.