Contributed by &a.jkh; and &a.gclarkii;. SUP is a network based software update tool developed at CMU. The purpose of this document is get the beginner up and running with sup. Getting setup

First off you will need to pick up the sup binaries. The easiest way of doing this is to grab the sup.tgz package from: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG:/pub/FreeBSD/packages/sup.tgz Install the sup package using pkg_add and add the following line to your /etc/services file: sup 871/tcp #sup SUP gets the information it needs to run from a configuration file called a supfile. This file tells sup what collections it will be updating and/or installing and where they go. The supfile in this directory will sup both the source and ports collection - look for the blank line seperating the two collections; if you don't want ports, you can simply delete all the ports entries. If you're inside the United States, you may also uncomment the `secure' collection line to grab the DES code. If you're outside the U.S., you should NOT sup this code from FreeBSD.ORG as this will violate U.S. export restrictions. Simply sup everything *but* the secure collection and then go look on "braae.ru.ac.za", where it's available for anonymous ftp for those outside the U.S. Any other distributions you do not wish to receive can be commented out with a # at the begining of the distribution line. Once this is setup, you're ready to go. To start sup type: sup supfile If you wish to see what sup is doing "verbosely", give it the -v option, like so: sup -v supfile Thats all there is to it! Remember that if you're running current, which is what you will have if you sup, please join the freebsd-current mailing list. You should also be sure to read: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG:/pub/FreeBSD/FAQ/current-policy.FAQ For important information on just what we can and cannot do for you as a -current user. Description of FreeBSD SUP distributions

For the main FreeBSD distribution: base: /usr/src/... misc files at the top of /usr/src bin: /usr/src/bin system binaries secure: /usr/src/secure DES Sources. U.S./Canada only! etc: /usr/src/etc system files games: /usr/src/games games gnu: /usr/src/gnu sources under the GNU Public License include: /usr/src/include include files sys: /usr/src/sys kernel sources lib: /usr/src/lib libraries libexec: /usr/src/libexec more system binaries share: /usr/src/share various shared resources sbin: /usr/src/sbin even more system binaries usrbin: /usr/src/usr.bin user binaries usrsbin: /usr/src/usr.sbin that's it for the system binaries And for the ports collection: ports-base: /usr/ports/... misc files at the top of /usr/ports ports-editors: /usr/ports/editors text editors ports-game: /usr/ports/games games ports-lang: /usr/ports/lang programming languages ports-mail: /usr/ports/mail mail software ports-math: /usr/ports/math math software ports-net: /usr/ports/net networking software ports-news: /usr/ports/news USENET news software ports-print: /usr/ports/print printing software ports-russian: /usr/ports/russian russian software ports-shells: /usr/ports/shells various UN*X shells ports-utils: /usr/ports/utils miscellaneous utilities ports-x11: /usr/ports/x11 X11 software