port upgrade

[Terry Barnum]

On Jun 24, 2010, at 6:29 AM, Brandon S Allbery KF8NH wrote:

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> On 6/23/10 20:40 , Terry Barnum wrote:
>> Is there a best practices way of upgrading ports? As a relatively new
>> macports user, I've been reluctant to upgrade postfix and dovecot on
>> my production server for fear of something breaking.
> 
> (1) Back up /opt/local/etc, or the critical directories therein (postfix)
> before upgrading ports.  (If you're really paranoid, also the queues
> under /opt/local/var.)
> 
> (2) Keep the deactivated old version around (that is, don't use -u).
> 
> If something goes pear-shaped, you can recover by reactivating the old
> version and if necessary restoring the backed-up configuration directory.

Thank you Brandon. If you use postfix/dovecot, or any daemon based port I guess, is it also recommended to manually halt the processes before doing an upgrade or does port upgrade do that for you?

Thanks,
-Terry