What is this thing called ``<code>sup</code>'', and how do I use it?

This is an archive of past FreeBSD releases; it's part of the FreeBSD Documentation Archive.

What is this thing called ``<code>sup</code>'', and how do I use it? Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X : Miscellaneous Questions : What is this thing called ``sup'', and how do I use it?
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7.21. What is this thing called ```sup`'', and how do I use it?

SUP stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU for keeping their development trees in sync. We use it to keep remote sites in sync with our central development sources.

Unless you have direct Internet connectivity, and don't care too much about the cost/duration of the sessions, you shouldn't use sup. For those ``low/expensive-bandwidth'' applications, we have developed CTM, see the section on CTM for more about that.

To use it, you need to have direct Internet connectivity (not just mail or news). First, pick up the sup.tgz package from:

The SUP package

Second, read the Handbook entry on SUP

This file describes how to setup sup on your machine. You may also want to look at

/usr/src/share/examples/sup/*-supfile, or you may grab updated supfiles from:

Updated SUP files

which are a set of supfiles for supping from FreeBSD.ORG.

Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X : Miscellaneous Questions : What is this thing called ``sup'', and how do I use it?
Previous: What's FreeBSD-current?
Next: How cool is FreeBSD?

7.21. What is this thing called ``sup'', and how do I use it?

7.21. What is this thing called ```sup`'', and how do I use it?