When I was trying out FreeBSD 5.4 I wrote a small textfile with stuff of how to do it in FreeBSD. Here is the part of it for updating :
How do I keep my system up to date?
===================================
The ports collection (FreeBSD's package management system) is
installed into /usr/ports by ServePath. The first thing to do is
to make sure that the latest patch sets have been installed.
# cd /usr/ports
# cd sysutils/portmanager && make all install && cd /usr/ports
# cd sysutils/portsnap && make all install && cd
/usr/local/etc
# mv portsnap.conf.sample portsnap.conf && cd /usr/local/sbin
# ./portsnap fetch && ./portsnap extract
The above commands will install two programs, portmanager, and
portsnap. These programs update the installed applications and
uninstalled sources, respectively. These two programs work
together in keeping FreeBSD up to date.
In order to apply the updated patch sets, execute the below:
# /usr/local/sbin/portsnap fetch
# /usr/local/sbin/portsnap update
In order to upgrade the installed applications, execute:
# /usr/local/sbin/portmanager -u
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http://users.skynet.be/six/gpure/tech/freebsd.txt
PS: it's true that you can find a lot of info in the freebsd handbook as well. But I mostly had to find stuff trough google
grtz,
gunnix