diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.sgml index a694012c63..3f758ec7aa 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.sgml @@ -1,3876 +1,3876 @@ Obtaining FreeBSD CDROM Publishers FreeBSD is available on CDROM from several retailers:
Daemon News 2680 Bayshore Parkway, Suite 307 Mountain View, CA 94043 USA Phone: +1 650 694-4949 Email: sales@daemonnews.org WWW: http://www.bsdmall.com/
Wind River Systems 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord, CA 94520 USA Phone: +1 925 691-2800 Fax: +1 925 674-0821 Email: info@osd.bsdi.com WWW: http://www.freebsdmall.com/
If you are a reseller and want to carry FreeBSD CDROM products, please contact the relevant department at Wind River Systems or:
Cylogistics 2680 Bayshore Parkway, Suite 307 Mountain View, CA 94043 USA Phone: +1 650 694-4949 Fax: +1 650 694-4953 Email: sales@cylogistics.com WWW: http://www.cylogistics.com/
DVD Publishers FreeBSD is available on DVD from:
FreeBSD Services Ltd 11 Lapwing Close Bicester OX26 6XR United Kingdom WWW: http://www.freebsd-services.com/
FTP Sites The official sources for FreeBSD are available via anonymous FTP from:
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/.
The FreeBSD mirror sites database is more accurate than the mirror listing in the handbook, as it gets its information from the DNS rather than relying on static lists of hosts. Additionally, FreeBSD is available via anonymous FTP from the following mirror sites. If you choose to obtain FreeBSD via anonymous FTP, please try to use a site near you. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, Ukraine, USA. Argentina In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ar.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ar.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Australia In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@au.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Brazil In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@br.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp7.br.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Canada In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ca.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ca.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ China In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster phj@cn.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.cn.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Czech Republic In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@cz.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Contact: calda@dzungle.ms.mff.cuni.cz Denmark In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@dk.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Estonia In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ee.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ee.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Finland In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@fi.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.fi.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ France In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@fr.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.fr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Germany In case of problems, please contact the mirror admins de-bsd-hubs@de.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp7.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Hong Kong ftp://ftp.hk.super.net/pub/FreeBSD/ Contact: ftp-admin@HK.Super.NET. Hungary In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster mohacsi@ik.bme.hu for this domain. ftp://ftp.hu.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Ireland In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ie.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ie.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Israel In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@il.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.il.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.il.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Japan In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@jp.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.jp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Korea In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@kr.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.kr.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Lithuania In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@lt.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.lt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Netherlands In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@nl.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.nl.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ New Zealand In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@nz.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.nz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Poland In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@pl.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.pl.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Portugal In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@pt.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.pt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.pt.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Romania In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ro.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ro.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Russia In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@ru.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Saudi Arabia In case of problems, please contact ftpadmin@isu.net.sa ftp://ftp.isu.net.sa/pub/mirrors/ftp.freebsd.org/ South Africa In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@za.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.za.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD/ Slovak Republic In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@sk.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.sk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Slovenia In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@si.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.si.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Spain In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@es.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.es.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Sweden In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@se.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.se.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.se.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.se.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Taiwan In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@tw.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Thailand ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/FreeBSD/ Contact: ftpadmin@ftp.nectec.or.th. Ukraine ftp://ftp.ua.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Contact: freebsd-mnt@lucky.net. UK In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@uk.FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.uk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ USA In case of problems, please contact the hostmaster hostmaster@FreeBSD.org for this domain. ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp3.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp4.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp5.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp6.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp7.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp8.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp9.FreeBSD.org/pub/os/FreeBSD/ ftp://ftp10.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ Anonymous CVS <anchor id="anoncvs-intro">Introduction Anonymous CVS (or, as it is otherwise known, anoncvs) is a feature provided by the CVS utilities bundled with FreeBSD for synchronizing with a remote CVS repository. Among other things, it allows users of FreeBSD to perform, with no special privileges, read-only CVS operations against one of the FreeBSD project's official anoncvs servers. To use it, one simply sets the CVSROOT environment variable to point at the appropriate anoncvs server, provides the well-known password anoncvs with the cvs login command, and then uses the &man.cvs.1; command to access it like any local repository. While it can also be said that the CVSup and anoncvs services both perform essentially the same function, there are various trade-offs which can influence the user's choice of synchronization methods. In a nutshell, CVSup is much more efficient in its usage of network resources and is by far the most technically sophisticated of the two, but at a price. To use CVSup, a special client must first be installed and configured before any bits can be grabbed, and then only in the fairly large chunks which CVSup calls collections. Anoncvs, by contrast, can be used to examine anything from an individual file to a specific program (like ls or grep) by referencing the CVS module name. Of course, anoncvs is also only good for read-only operations on the CVS repository, so if it's your intention to support local development in one repository shared with the FreeBSD project bits then CVSup is really your only option. <anchor id="anoncvs-usage">Using Anonymous CVS Configuring &man.cvs.1; to use an Anonymous CVS repository is a simple matter of setting the CVSROOT environment variable to point to one of the FreeBSD project's anoncvs servers. At the time of this writing, the following servers are available: USA: :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs (Use cvs login and enter the password anoncvs when prompted.) Since CVS allows one to check out virtually any version of the FreeBSD sources that ever existed (or, in some cases, will exist :-), you need to be familiar with the revision () flag to &man.cvs.1; and what some of the permissible values for it in the FreeBSD Project repository are. There are two kinds of tags, revision tags and branch tags. A revision tag refers to a specific revision. Its meaning stays the same from day to day. A branch tag, on the other hand, refers to the latest revision on a given line of development, at any given time. Because a branch tag does not refer to a specific revision, it may mean something different tomorrow than it means today. Here are the branch tags that users might be interested in (keep in mind that the only tags valid for the ports collection is HEAD). HEAD Symbolic name for the main line, or FreeBSD-CURRENT. Also the default when no revision is specified. RELENG_4 The line of development for FreeBSD-4.X, also known as FreeBSD-STABLE. RELENG_4_3 The release branch for FreeBSD-4.3, used only for security advisories and other seriously critical fixes. RELENG_3 The line of development for FreeBSD-3.X, also known as 3.X-STABLE. RELENG_2_2 The line of development for FreeBSD-2.2.X, also known as 2.2-STABLE. This branch is mostly obsolete. Here are the revision tags that users might be interested in. Again, none of these are valid for the ports collection since the ports collection does not have multiple revisions. RELENG_4_3_0_RELEASE FreeBSD 4.3. RELENG_4_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD 4.2. RELENG_4_1_1_RELEASE FreeBSD 4.1.1. RELENG_4_1_0_RELEASE FreeBSD 4.1. RELENG_4_0_0_RELEASE FreeBSD 4.0. RELENG_3_5_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.5. RELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.4. RELENG_3_3_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.3. RELENG_3_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.2. RELENG_3_1_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.1. RELENG_3_0_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.0. RELENG_2_2_8_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.8. RELENG_2_2_7_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.7. RELENG_2_2_6_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.6. RELENG_2_2_5_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.5. RELENG_2_2_2_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.2. RELENG_2_2_1_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.1. RELENG_2_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.0. When you specify a branch tag, you normally receive the latest versions of the files on that line of development. If you wish to receive some past version, you can do so by specifying a date with the flag. See the &man.cvs.1; man page for more details. Examples While it really is recommended that you read the manual page for &man.cvs.1; thoroughly before doing anything, here are some quick examples which essentially show how to use Anonymous CVS: Checking out something from -CURRENT (&man.ls.1;) and deleting it again: &prompt.user; setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs &prompt.user; cvs login At the prompt, enter the password anoncvs. &prompt.user; cvs co ls &prompt.user; cvs release -d ls &prompt.user; cvs logout Checking out the version of &man.ls.1; in the 3.X-STABLE branch: &prompt.user; setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs &prompt.user; cvs login At the prompt, enter the password anoncvs. &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_3 ls &prompt.user; cvs release -d ls &prompt.user; cvs logout Creating a list of changes (as unified diffs) to &man.ls.1; &prompt.user; setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs &prompt.user; cvs login At the prompt, enter the password anoncvs. &prompt.user; cvs rdiff -u -rRELENG_3_0_0_RELEASE -rRELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE ls &prompt.user; cvs logout Finding out what other module names can be used: &prompt.user; setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs &prompt.user; cvs login At the prompt, enter the password anoncvs. &prompt.user; cvs co modules &prompt.user; more modules/modules &prompt.user; cvs release -d modules &prompt.user; cvs logout Other Resources The following additional resources may be helpful in learning CVS: CVS Tutorial from Cal Poly. Cyclic Software, commercial maintainers of CVS. CVSWeb is the FreeBSD Project web interface for CVS. Using CTM CTM is a method for keeping a remote directory tree in sync with a central one. It has been developed for usage with FreeBSD's source trees, though other people may find it useful for other purposes as time goes by. Little, if any, documentation currently exists at this time on the process of creating deltas, so talk to &a.phk; for more information should you wish to use CTM for other things. Why should I use <application>CTM</application>? CTM will give you a local copy of the FreeBSD source trees. There are a number of “flavors” of the tree available. Whether you wish to track the entire CVS tree or just one of the branches, CTM can provide you the information. If you are an active developer on FreeBSD, but have lousy or non-existent TCP/IP connectivity, or simply wish to have the changes automatically sent to you, CTM was made for you. You will need to obtain up to three deltas per day for the most active branches. However, you should consider having them sent by automatic email. The sizes of the updates are always kept as small as possible. This is typically less than 5K, with an occasional (one in ten) being 10-50K and every now and then a large 100K+ or more coming around. You will also need to make yourself aware of the various caveats related to working directly from the development sources rather than a pre-packaged release. This is particularly true if you choose the “current” sources. It is recommended that you read Staying current with FreeBSD. What do I need to use <application>CTM</application>? You will need two things: The CTM program, and the initial deltas to feed it (to get up to “current” levels). The CTM program has been part of FreeBSD ever since version 2.0 was released, and lives in /usr/src/usr.sbin/CTM if you have a copy of the source available. If you are running a pre-2.0 version of FreeBSD, you can fetch the current CTM sources directly from: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/src/usr.sbin/ctm/ The “deltas” you feed CTM can be had two ways, FTP or email. If you have general FTP access to the Internet then the following FTP sites support access to CTM: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CTM/ or see section mirrors. FTP the relevant directory and fetch the README file, starting from there. If you wish to get your deltas via email: Send email to &a.majordomo; to subscribe to one of the CTM distribution lists. “ctm-cvs-cur” supports the entire CVS tree. “ctm-src-cur” supports the head of the development branch. “ctm-src-2_2” supports the 2.2 release branch, etc.. (If you do not know how to subscribe yourself using majordomo, send a message first containing the word help — it will send you back usage instructions.) When you begin receiving your CTM updates in the mail, you may use the ctm_rmail program to unpack and apply them. You can actually use the ctm_rmail program directly from a entry in /etc/aliases if you want to have the process run in a fully automated fashion. Check the ctm_rmail man page for more details. No matter what method you use to get the CTM deltas, you should subscribe to the ctm-announce@FreeBSD.org mailing list. In the future, this will be the only place where announcements concerning the operations of the CTM system will be posted. Send an email to &a.majordomo; with a single line of subscribe ctm-announce to get added to the list. Using <application>CTM</application> for the first time Before you can start using CTM deltas, you will need to get to a starting point for the deltas produced subsequently to it. First you should determine what you already have. Everyone can start from an “empty” directory. You must use an initial “Empty” delta to start off your CTM supported tree. At some point it is intended that one of these “started” deltas be distributed on the CD for your convenience, however, this does not currently happen. Since the trees are many tens of megabytes, you should prefer to start from something already at hand. If you have a -RELEASE CD, you can copy or extract an initial source from it. This will save a significant transfer of data. You can recognize these “starter” deltas by the X appended to the number (src-cur.3210XEmpty.gz for instance). The designation following the X corresponds to the origin of your initial “seed”. Empty is an empty directory. As a rule a base transition from Empty is produced every 100 deltas. By the way, they are large! 25 to 30 Megabytes of gzip'd data is common for the XEmpty deltas. Once you've picked a base delta to start from, you will also need all deltas with higher numbers following it. Using <application>CTM</application> in your daily life To apply the deltas, simply say: &prompt.root; cd /where/ever/you/want/the/stuff &prompt.root; ctm -v -v /where/you/store/your/deltas/src-xxx.* CTM understands deltas which have been put through gzip, so you do not need to gunzip them first, this saves disk space. Unless it feels very secure about the entire process, CTM will not touch your tree. To verify a delta you can also use the flag and CTM will not actually touch your tree; it will merely verify the integrity of the delta and see if it would apply cleanly to your current tree. There are other options to CTM as well, see the manual pages or look in the sources for more information. That is really all there is to it. Every time you get a new delta, just run it through CTM to keep your sources up to date. Do not remove the deltas if they are hard to download again. You just might want to keep them around in case something bad happens. Even if you only have floppy disks, consider using fdwrite to make a copy. Keeping your local changes As a developer one would like to experiment with and change files in the source tree. CTM supports local modifications in a limited way: before checking for the presence of a file foo, it first looks for foo.ctm. If this file exists, CTM will operate on it instead of foo. This behavior gives us a simple way to maintain local changes: simply copy the files you plan to modify to the corresponding file names with a .ctm suffix. Then you can freely hack the code, while CTM keeps the .ctm file up-to-date. Other interesting <application>CTM</application> options Finding out exactly what would be touched by an update You can determine the list of changes that CTM will make on your source repository using the option to CTM. This is useful if you would like to keep logs of the changes, pre- or post- process the modified files in any manner, or just are feeling a tad paranoid :-). Making backups before updating Sometimes you may want to backup all the files that would be changed by a CTM update. Specifying the option causes CTM to backup all files that would be touched by a given CTM delta to backup-file. Restricting the files touched by an update Sometimes you would be interested in restricting the scope of a given CTM update, or may be interested in extracting just a few files from a sequence of deltas. You can control the list of files that CTM would operate on by specifying filtering regular expressions using the and options. For example, to extract an up-to-date copy of lib/libc/Makefile from your collection of saved CTM deltas, run the commands: &prompt.root; cd /where/ever/you/want/to/extract/it/ &prompt.root; ctm -e '^lib/libc/Makefile' ~ctm/src-xxx.* For every file specified in a CTM delta, the and options are applied in the order given on the command line. The file is processed by CTM only if it is marked as eligible after all the and options are applied to it. Future plans for <application>CTM</application> Tons of them: Use some kind of authentication into the CTM system, so as to allow detection of spoofed CTM updates. Clean up the options to CTM, they became confusing and counter intuitive. Miscellaneous stuff There is a sequence of deltas for the ports collection too, but interest has not been all that high yet. Tell me if you want an email list for that too and we will consider setting it up. CTM mirrors CTM/FreeBSD is available via anonymous FTP from the following mirror sites. If you choose to obtain CTM via anonymous FTP, please try to use a site near you. In case of problems, please contact &a.phk;. California, Bay Area, official source ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/CTM/ Germany, Trier ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/unix/systems/BSD/FreeBSD/CTM/ South Africa, backup server for old deltas ftp://ftp.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CTM/ Taiwan/R.O.C, Chiayi ftp://ctm.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CTM/ ftp://ctm2.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/CTM/ ftp://ctm3.tw.FreeBSD.org/pub/freebsd/CTM/ If you did not find a mirror near to you or the mirror is incomplete, try FTP search at http://ftpsearch.ntnu.no/ftpsearch. FTP search is a great free archie server in Trondheim, Norway. Using CVSup Introduction CVSup is a software package for distributing and updating source trees from a master CVS repository on a remote server host. The FreeBSD sources are maintained in a CVS repository on a central development machine in California. With CVSup, FreeBSD users can easily keep their own source trees up to date. CVSup uses the so-called pull model of updating. Under the pull model, each client asks the server for updates, if and when they are wanted. The server waits passively for update requests from its clients. Thus all updates are instigated by the client. The server never sends unsolicited updates. Users must either run the CVSup client manually to get an update, or they must set up a cron job to run it automatically on a regular basis. The term CVSup, capitalized just so, refers to the entire software package. Its main components are the client cvsup which runs on each user's machine, and the server cvsupd which runs at each of the FreeBSD mirror sites. As you read the FreeBSD documentation and mailing lists, you may see references to sup. Sup was the predecessor of CVSup, and it served a similar purpose.CVSup is in used in much the same way as sup and, in fact, uses configuration files which are backward-compatible with sup's. Sup is no longer used in the FreeBSD project, because CVSup is both faster and more flexible. Installation The easiest way to install CVSup - is to use the net/cvsup-bin port - from the FreeBSD ports collection. + is to use the precompiled net/cvsup package + from the FreeBSD packages collection. If you prefer to build CVSup from source, you can use the net/cvsup port instead. But be forewarned: the net/cvsup port depends on the Modula-3 - system, which takes a substantial amount of time, memory, and - disk space to build. + system, which takes a substantial amount of time and + disk space to download and build. If you do not know anything about CVSup at all and want a single package which will install it, set up the configuration file and start the transfer via a pointy-clicky type of interface, then get the cvsupit package. Just hand it to &man.pkg.add.1; and it will lead you through the configuration process in a menu-oriented fashion. CVSup Configuration CVSup's operation is controlled by a configuration file called the supfile. There are some sample supfiles in the directory /usr/share/examples/cvsup/. The information in a supfile answers the following questions for cvsup: Which files do you want to receive? Which versions of them do you want? Where do you want to get them from? Where do you want to put them on your own machine? Where do you want to put your status files? In the following sections, we will construct a typical supfile by answering each of these questions in turn. First, we describe the overall structure of a supfile. A supfile is a text file. Comments begin with # and extend to the end of the line. Lines that are blank and lines that contain only comments are ignored. Each remaining line describes a set of files that the user wishes to receive. The line begins with the name of a collection, a logical grouping of files defined by the server. The name of the collection tells the server which files you want. After the collection name come zero or more fields, separated by white space. These fields answer the questions listed above. There are two types of fields: flag fields and value fields. A flag field consists of a keyword standing alone, e.g., delete or compress. A value field also begins with a keyword, but the keyword is followed without intervening white space by = and a second word. For example, release=cvs is a value field. A supfile typically specifies more than one collection to receive. One way to structure a supfile is to specify all of the relevant fields explicitly for each collection. However, that tends to make the supfile lines quite long, and it is inconvenient because most fields are the same for all of the collections in a supfile. CVSup provides a defaulting mechanism to avoid these problems. Lines beginning with the special pseudo-collection name *default can be used to set flags and values which will be used as defaults for the subsequent collections in the supfile. A default value can be overridden for an individual collection, by specifying a different value with the collection itself. Defaults can also be changed or augmented in mid-supfile by additional *default lines. With this background, we will now proceed to construct a supfile for receiving and updating the main source tree of FreeBSD-CURRENT. Which files do you want to receive? The files available via CVSup are organized into named groups called collections. The collections that are available are described here. In this example, we wish to receive the entire main source tree for the FreeBSD system. There is a single large collection src-all which will give us all of that. As a first step toward constructing our supfile, we simply list the collections, one per line (in this case, only one line): src-all Which version(s) of them do you want? With CVSup, you can receive virtually any version of the sources that ever existed. That is possible because the cvsupd server works directly from the CVS repository, which contains all of the versions. You specify which one of them you want using the tag= and value fields. Be very careful to specify any tag= fields correctly. Some tags are valid only for certain collections of files. If you specify an incorrect or misspelled tag, CVSup will delete files which you probably do not want deleted. In particular, use only tag=. for the ports-* collections. The tag= field names a symbolic tag in the repository. There are two kinds of tags, revision tags and branch tags. A revision tag refers to a specific revision. Its meaning stays the same from day to day. A branch tag, on the other hand, refers to the latest revision on a given line of development, at any given time. Because a branch tag does not refer to a specific revision, it may mean something different tomorrow than it means today. Here are the branch tags that users might be interested in. Keep in mind that only the tag=. is relevant for the ports collection. tag=. The main line of development, also known as FreeBSD-CURRENT. The . is not punctuation; it is the name of the tag. Valid for all collections. tag=RELENG_4 The line of development for FreeBSD-4.X, also known as FreeBSD-STABLE. tag=RELENG_3 The line of development for FreeBSD-3.X tag=RELENG_2_2 The line of development for FreeBSD-2.2.X, also known as 2.2-STABLE. Here are the revision tags that users might be interested in. Again, these are not valid for the ports collection. tag=RELENG_4_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-4.2. tag=RELENG_4_1_1_RELEASE FreeBSD-4.1.1. tag=RELENG_4_1_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-4.1. tag=RELENG_4_0_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-4.0. tag=RELENG_3_5_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.5. tag=RELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.4. tag=RELENG_3_3_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.3. tag=RELENG_3_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.2. tag=RELENG_3_1_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.1. tag=RELENG_3_0_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-3.0. tag=RELENG_2_2_8_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.8. tag=RELENG_2_2_7_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.7. tag=RELENG_2_2_6_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.6. tag=RELENG_2_2_5_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.5. tag=RELENG_2_2_2_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.2. tag=RELENG_2_2_1_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.1. tag=RELENG_2_2_0_RELEASE FreeBSD-2.2.0. Be very careful to type the tag name exactly as shown. CVSup cannot distinguish between valid and invalid tags. If you misspell the tag, CVSup will behave as though you had specified a valid tag which happens to refer to no files at all. It will delete your existing sources in that case. When you specify a branch tag, you normally receive the latest versions of the files on that line of development. If you wish to receive some past version, you can do so by specifying a date with the value field. The &man.cvsup.1; manual page explains how to do that. For our example, we wish to receive FreeBSD-CURRENT. We add this line at the beginning of our supfile: *default tag=. There is an important special case that comes into play if you specify neither a tag= field nor a date= field. In that case, you receive the actual RCS files directly from the server's CVS repository, rather than receiving a particular version. Developers generally prefer this mode of operation. By maintaining a copy of the repository itself on their systems, they gain the ability to browse the revision histories and examine past versions of files. This gain is achieved at a large cost in terms of disk space, however. Where do you want to get them from? We use the host= field to tell cvsup where to obtain its updates. Any of the CVSup mirror sites will do, though you should try to select one that is close to you in cyberspace. In this example we will use a fictional FreeBSD distribution site, cvsup666.FreeBSD.org: *default host=cvsup666.FreeBSD.org You will need to change the host to one that actually exists before running CVSup. On any particular run of cvsup, you can override the host setting on the command line, with . Where do you want to put them on your own machine? The prefix= field tells cvsup where to put the files it receives. In this example, we will put the source files directly into our main source tree, /usr/src. The src directory is already implicit in the collections we have chosen to receive, so this is the correct specification: *default prefix=/usr Where should cvsup maintain its status files? The CVSup client maintains certain status files in what is called the base directory. These files help CVSup to work more efficiently, by keeping track of which updates you have already received. We will use the standard base directory, /usr/local/etc/cvsup: *default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup This setting is used by default if it is not specified in the supfile, so we actually do not need the above line. If your base directory does not already exist, now would be a good time to create it. The cvsup client will refuse to run if the base directory does not exist. Miscellaneous supfile settings: There is one more line of boiler plate that normally needs to be present in the supfile: *default release=cvs delete use-rel-suffix compress release=cvs indicates that the server should get its information out of the main FreeBSD CVS repository. This is virtually always the case, but there are other possibilities which are beyond the scope of this discussion. delete gives CVSup permission to delete files. You should always specify this, so that CVSup can keep your source tree fully up-to-date. CVSup is careful to delete only those files for which it is responsible. Any extra files you happen to have will be left strictly alone. use-rel-suffix is ... arcane. If you really want to know about it, see the &man.cvsup.1; manual page. Otherwise, just specify it and do not worry about it. compress enables the use of gzip-style compression on the communication channel. If your network link is T1 speed or faster, you probably should not use compression. Otherwise, it helps substantially. Putting it all together: Here is the entire supfile for our example: *default tag=. *default host=cvsup666.FreeBSD.org *default prefix=/usr *default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup *default release=cvs delete use-rel-suffix compress src-all The refuse file As mentioned above, CVSup uses a pull method. Basically, this means that you connect to the CVSup server, and it says, Here's what you can download from me..., and your client responds OK, I'll take this, this, this, and this. In the default configuration, the CVSup client will take every file associated with the collection and tag you chose in the configuration file. However, this is not always what you want, especially if you are synching the doc, ports, or www trees — most people can't read four or five languages, and therefore they don't need to download the language-specific files. If you are CVSuping the ports collection, you can get around this by specifying each collection individually (e.g., ports-astrology, ports-biology, etc instead of simply saying ports-all). However, since the doc and www trees do not have language-specific collections, you must use one of CVSup's many nifty features; the refuse file. The refuse file essentially tells CVSup that it should not take every single file from a collection; in other words, it tells the client to refuse certain files from the server. The refuse file can be found (or, if you do not yet have one, should be placed) in base/sup/refuse. base is defined in your supfile; by default, base is /usr/local/etc/cvsup, which means that by default the refuse file is in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse. The refuse file has a very simple format; it simply contains the names of files or directories that you do not wish to download. For example, if you cannot speak any languages other than English and some German, and you do not feel the need to use the German applications, you can put the following in your refuse file: ports/chinese ports/german ports/japanese ports/korean ports/russian ports/vietnamese doc/es_ES.ISO8859-1 doc/ja_JP.eucJP and so forth for the other languages. Note that the name of the repository is the first directory in the refuse file. With this very useful feature, those users who are on slow links or pay by the minute for their Internet connection will be able to save valuable time as they will no longer need to download files that they will never use. For more information on refuse files and other neat features of CVSup, please view its man page. Running <application>CVSup</application> You are now ready to try an update. The command line for doing this is quite simple: &prompt.root; cvsup supfile where supfile is of course the name of the supfile you have just created. Assuming you are running under X11, cvsup will display a GUI window with some buttons to do the usual things. Press the go button, and watch it run. Since you are updating your actual /usr/src tree in this example, you will need to run the program as root so that cvsup has the permissions it needs to update your files. Having just created your configuration file, and having never used this program before, that might understandably make you nervous. There is an easy way to do a trial run without touching your precious files. Just create an empty directory somewhere convenient, and name it as an extra argument on the command line: &prompt.root; mkdir /var/tmp/dest &prompt.root; cvsup supfile /var/tmp/dest The directory you specify will be used as the destination directory for all file updates. CVSup will examine your usual files in /usr/src, but it will not modify or delete any of them. Any file updates will instead land in /var/tmp/dest/usr/src. CVSup will also leave its base directory status files untouched when run this way. The new versions of those files will be written into the specified directory. As long as you have read access to /usr/src, you do not even need to be root to perform this kind of trial run. If you are not running X11 or if you just do not like GUIs, you should add a couple of options to the command line when you run cvsup: &prompt.root; cvsup -g -L 2 supfile The tells CVSup not to use its GUI. This is automatic if you are not running X11, but otherwise you have to specify it. The tells CVSup to print out the details of all the file updates it is doing. There are three levels of verbosity, from to . The default is 0, which means total silence except for error messages. There are plenty of other options available. For a brief list of them, type cvsup -H. For more detailed descriptions, see the manual page. Once you are satisfied with the way updates are working, you can arrange for regular runs of CVSup using &man.cron.8;. Obviously, you should not let CVSup use its GUI when running it from &man.cron.8;. <application>CVSup</application> File Collections The file collections available via CVSup are organized hierarchically. There are a few large collections, and they are divided into smaller sub-collections. Receiving a large collection is equivalent to receiving each of its sub-collections. The hierarchical relationships among collections are reflected by the use of indentation in the list below. The most commonly used collections are src-all, and ports-all. The other collections are used only by small groups of people for specialized purposes, and some mirror sites may not carry all of them. cvs-all release=cvs The main FreeBSD CVS repository, including the cryptography code. distrib release=cvs Files related to the distribution and mirroring of FreeBSD. doc-all release=cvs Sources for the FreeBSD handbook and other documentation. ports-all release=cvs The FreeBSD ports collection. ports-archivers release=cvs Archiving tools. ports-astro release=cvs Astronomical ports. ports-audio release=cvs Sound support. ports-base release=cvs Miscellaneous files at the top of /usr/ports. ports-benchmarks release=cvs Benchmarks. ports-biology release=cvs Biology. ports-cad release=cvs Computer aided design tools. ports-chinese release=cvs Chinese language support. ports-comms release=cvs Communication software. ports-converters release=cvs character code converters. ports-databases release=cvs Databases. ports-deskutils release=cvs Things that used to be on the desktop before computers were invented. ports-devel release=cvs Development utilities. ports-editors release=cvs Editors. ports-emulators release=cvs Emulators for other operating systems. ports-ftp release=cvs FTP client and server utilities. ports-games release=cvs Games. ports-german release=cvs German language support. ports-graphics release=cvs Graphics utilities. ports-irc release=cvs Internet Relay Chat utilities. ports-japanese release=cvs Japanese language support. ports-java release=cvs Java utilities. ports-korean release=cvs Korean language support. ports-lang release=cvs Programming languages. ports-mail release=cvs Mail software. ports-math release=cvs Numerical computation software. ports-mbone release=cvs MBone applications. ports-misc release=cvs Miscellaneous utilities. ports-net release=cvs Networking software. ports-news release=cvs USENET news software. ports-palm release=cvs Software support for 3Com Palm(tm) series. ports-print release=cvs Printing software. ports-russian release=cvs Russian language support. ports-security release=cvs Security utilities. ports-shells release=cvs Command line shells. ports-sysutils release=cvs System utilities. ports-textproc release=cvs text processing utilities (does not include desktop publishing). ports-vietnamese release=cvs Vietnamese language support. ports-www release=cvs Software related to the World Wide Web. ports-x11 release=cvs Ports to support the X window system. ports-x11-clocks release=cvs X11 clocks. ports-x11-fm release=cvs X11 file managers. ports-x11-fonts release=cvs X11 fonts and font utilities. ports-x11-toolkits release=cvs X11 toolkits. ports-x11-servers X11 servers. ports-x11-wm X11 window managers. src-all release=cvs The main FreeBSD sources, including the cryptography code. src-base release=cvs Miscellaneous files at the top of /usr/src. src-bin release=cvs User utilities that may be needed in single-user mode (/usr/src/bin). src-contrib release=cvs Utilities and libraries from outside the FreeBSD project, used relatively unmodified (/usr/src/contrib). src-crypto release=cvs Cryptography utilities and libraries from outside the FreeBSD project, used relatively unmodified (/usr/src/crypto). src-eBones release=cvs Kerberos and DES (/usr/src/eBones). Not used in current releases of FreeBSD. src-etc release=cvs System configuration files (/usr/src/etc). src-games release=cvs Games (/usr/src/games). src-gnu release=cvs Utilities covered by the GNU Public License (/usr/src/gnu). src-include release=cvs Header files (/usr/src/include). src-kerberos5 release=cvs Kerberos5 security package (/usr/src/kerberos5). src-kerberosIV release=cvs KerberosIV security package (/usr/src/kerberosIV). src-lib release=cvs Libraries (/usr/src/lib). src-libexec release=cvs System programs normally executed by other programs (/usr/src/libexec). src-release release=cvs Files required to produce a FreeBSD release (/usr/src/release). src-secure release=cvs DES (/usr/src/secure). src-sbin release=cvs System utilities for single-user mode (/usr/src/sbin). src-share release=cvs Files that can be shared across multiple systems (/usr/src/share). src-sys release=cvs The kernel (/usr/src/sys). src-sys-crypto release=cvs Kernel cryptography code (/usr/src/sys/crypto). src-tools release=cvs Various tools for the maintenance of FreeBSD (/usr/src/tools). src-usrbin release=cvs User utilities (/usr/src/usr.bin). src-usrsbin release=cvs System utilities (/usr/src/usr.sbin). www release=cvs The sources for the World Wide Web data. distrib release=self The CVSup server's own configuration files. Used by CVSup mirror sites. gnats release=current The GNATS bug-tracking database. mail-archive release=current FreeBSD mailing list archive. www release=current The installed World Wide Web data. Used by WWW mirror sites. For more information For the CVSup FAQ and other information about CVSup, see The CVSup Home Page. Most FreeBSD-related discussion of CVSup takes place on the &a.hackers;. New versions of the software are announced there, as well as on the &a.announce;. Questions and bug reports should be addressed to the author of the program at cvsup-bugs@polstra.com. CVSup Sites CVSup servers for FreeBSD are running at the following sites: Argentina cvsup.ar.FreeBSD.org (maintainer msagre@cactus.fi.uba.ar) Australia cvsup.au.FreeBSD.org (maintainer dawes@xfree86.org) cvsup3.au.FreeBSD.org (maintainer FreeBSD@admin.gil.com.au) Austria cvsup.at.FreeBSD.org (maintainer postmaster@wu-wien.ac.at) Brazil cvsup.br.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@cvsup.br.FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.br.FreeBSD.org (maintainer tps@ti.sk) cvsup3.br.FreeBSD.org (maintainer camposr@matrix.com.br) Canada cvsup.ca.FreeBSD.org (maintainer dan@jaded.net) cvsup2.ca.FreeBSD.org (maintainer hostmaster@ca.freebsd.org) China cvsup.cn.FreeBSD.org (maintainer phj@cn.FreeBSD.org) Czech Republic cvsup.cz.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cejkar@dcse.fee.vutbr.cz) Denmark cvsup.dk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jesper@skriver.dk) Estonia cvsup.ee.FreeBSD.org (maintainer taavi@uninet.ee) Finland cvsup.fi.FreeBSD.org (maintainer count@key.sms.fi) cvsup2.fi.FreeBSD.org (maintainer count@key.sms.fi) France cvsup.fr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer hostmaster@fr.FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.fr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ftpmaint@uvsq.fr) Germany cvsup.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer rse@freebsd.org) cvsup1.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer wosch@FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@nikoma.de) cvsup3.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ag@leo.org) cvsup4.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@cosmo-project.de) cvsup5.de.FreeBSD.org (maintainer rse@freebsd.org) Greece cvsup.gr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ftpadm@duth.gr) cvsup2.gr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer paschos@cs.uoi.gr) Iceland cvsup.is.FreeBSD.org (maintainer adam@veda.is) Ireland cvsup.ie.FreeBSD.org (maintainer dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie), Trinity College, Dublin. Japan cvsup.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsupadm@jp.FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer max@FreeBSD.org) cvsup3.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer shige@cin.nihon-u.ac.jp) cvsup4.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup-admin@ftp.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp) cvsup5.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@imasy.or.jp) cvsup6.jp.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsupadm@jp.FreeBSD.org) Korea cvsup.kr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cjh@kr.FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.kr.FreeBSD.org (maintainer holywar@mail.holywar.net) Lithuania cvsup.lt.FreeBSD.org (maintainer domas.mituzas@delfi.lt) Netherlands cvsup.nl.FreeBSD.org (maintainer xaa@xaa.iae.nl) cvsup2.nl.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@nl.uu.net) Norway cvsup.no.FreeBSD.org (maintainer Per.Hove@math.ntnu.no) Poland cvsup.pl.FreeBSD.org (maintainer Mariusz@kam.pl) Portugal cvsup.pt.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jpedras@webvolution.net) Russia cvsup.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ache@nagual.pp.ru) cvsup2.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer dv@dv.ru) cvsup3.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer fjoe@iclub.nsu.ru) cvsup4.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer zhecka@klondike.ru) cvsup5.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer maxim@macomnet.ru) cvsup6.ru.FreeBSD.org (maintainer pvr@corbina.net) Slovak Republic cvsup.sk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer tps@tps.sk) cvsup2.sk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer tps@tps.sk) Slovenia cvsup.si.FreeBSD.org (maintainer blaz@si.FreeBSD.org) South Africa cvsup.za.FreeBSD.org (maintainer markm@FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.za.FreeBSD.org (maintainer markm@FreeBSD.org) Spain cvsup.es.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jesusr@FreeBSD.org) cvsup2.es.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jesusr@FreeBSD.org) cvsup3.es.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jose@we.lc.ehu.es) Sweden cvsup.se.FreeBSD.org (maintainer pantzer@ludd.luth.se) cvsup2.se.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@dataphone.net) Taiwan cvsup.tw.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jdli@freebsd.csie.nctu.edu.tw) cvsup2.tw.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ycheng@sinica.edu.tw) cvsup3.tw.FreeBSD.org (maintainer foxfair@FreeBSD.org) Ukraine cvsup2.ua.FreeBSD.org (maintainer freebsd-mnt@lucky.net) cvsup3.ua.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ftpmaster@ukr.net), Kiev cvsup4.ua.FreeBSD.org (maintainer phantom@cris.net) United Kingdom cvsup.uk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer joe@pavilion.net) cvsup2.uk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer brian@FreeBSD.org) cvsup3.uk.FreeBSD.org (maintainer ftp-admin@plig.net) USA cvsup1.FreeBSD.org (maintainer skynyrd@opus.cts.cwu.edu), Washington state cvsup2.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jdp@FreeBSD.org), California cvsup3.FreeBSD.org (maintainer wollman@FreeBSD.org), Massachusetts cvsup4.FreeBSD.org (maintainer rgrimes@FreeBSD.org), Oregon cvsup5.FreeBSD.org (maintainer mjr@blackened.com), Arizona cvsup6.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jdp@FreeBSD.org), Florida cvsup7.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jdp@FreeBSD.org), Washington state cvsup8.FreeBSD.org (maintainer hostmaster@bigmirror.com), Washington state cvsup9.FreeBSD.org (maintainer qbsd@uswest.net), Minnesota cvsup10.FreeBSD.org (maintainer jdp@FreeBSD.org), California cvsup11.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@research.uu.net), Virginia cvsup12.FreeBSD.org (maintainer will@FreeBSD.org), Indiana cvsup13.FreeBSD.org (maintainer dima@valueclick.com), California cvsup14.FreeBSD.org (maintainer freebsd-cvsup@mfnx.net), California cvsup15.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@math.uic.edu), Illinois cvsup16.FreeBSD.org (maintainer pth3k@virginia.edu), Virginia cvsup17.FreeBSD.org (maintainer cvsup@mirrortree.com), Washington state AFS Sites AFS servers for FreeBSD are running at the following sites; Sweden The path to the files are: /afs/stacken.kth.se/ftp/pub/FreeBSD/ stacken.kth.se # Stacken Computer Club, KTH, Sweden 130.237.234.43 #hot.stacken.kth.se 130.237.237.230 #fishburger.stacken.kth.se 130.237.234.3 #milko.stacken.kth.se Maintainer ftp@stacken.kth.se diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml index 35ec7aac9b..f0a899a275 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1306 +1,1306 @@ Installing Applications: Packages and Ports Synopsis ports packages There is only so much you can do with FreeBSD. If you are an operating systems developer then the base system likely contains everything you need. If that is not what you are planning to do with FreeBSD then you will probably want to install additional software—perhaps a web server, or a mail reader, or a graphical environment such as KDE or GNOME. If you have used a Unix system before you will know that the typical procedure for installing third party software goes something like this: Download the software, which might be distributed in source code format, or as a binary. Unpack the software from its distribution format (typically a tarball compressed with either &man.compress.1; or &man.gzip.1;). Locate the documentation (perhaps a README file, or some files in a doc/ subdirectory) and read up on how to install the software. If the software was distributed in source format, compile it. This may involve editing a Makefile, or running a configure script, and other work. Test and install the software. And that is only if everything goes well. If you are installing a software package that was not deliberately ported to FreeBSD you may even have to go in and edit the code to make it work properly. Should you want to, you can continue to install software the traditional way with FreeBSD. However, FreeBSD provides two technologies which can save you a lot of effort; packages and ports. At the time of writing, over &os.numports; third party applications have been made available in this way. For any given application, the FreeBSD package for that application is a single file which you must download. The package contains pre-compiled copies of all the commands for the application, as well as any configuration files or documentation. A downloaded package file can be manipulated with FreeBSD pkg_* commands, such as &man.pkg.add.1; &man.pkg.delete.1;, &man.pkg.info.1;, and so on. Installing a new application can be carried out with a single command. A FreeBSD port for an application is a collection of files designed to automate the process of compiling an application from source code. Remember that there are a number of steps you would normally carry out if you compiled a program yourself (unpacking, patching, compiling, installing). The files that make up a port contain all the necessary information to allow the system to do this for you. You run a handful of simple commands and the source code for the application is automatically downloaded, extracted, patched, compiled, and installed for you. In fact, the ports system can also be used to generate packages which can later be manipulated with the pkg_* commands. Both packages and ports understand dependencies. Suppose you want to install an application that depends on a specific library being installed. Both the application and the library have been made available as FreeBSD ports and packages. If you use the pkg_add command or the ports system to add the application, both will notice that the library has not been installed, and the commands will install the library first. Given that the two technologies are quite similar, you might be wondering why FreeBSD bothers with both. Packages and ports both have their own strengths, and which one you use will depend on your own preference. Package benefits A compressed package tarball is typically smaller than the compressed tarball containing the source code for the application. Packages do not require any additional compilation. For large applications, such as Mozilla, KDE, or GNOME this can be important, particularly if you are on a slow system. Packages do not require you to understand any of the process involved in compiling software on FreeBSD. Ports benefits Packages are normally compiled with conservative options, because they have to run on the maximum number of systems. By installing from the port, you can tweak the compilation options to (for example) generate code that is specific to a 686 processor. Some packages have compile time options relating to what they can and can't do. For example, Apache can be configured with a wide variety of different builtin options. By building from the port you do not have to accept the default options, and can set them yourself. In some cases, multiple packages will exist for the same application to specify certain settings. For example, Ghostscript is available as a ghostscript package and a ghostscript-nox11 package, depending on whether or not you have installed an X11 server. This sort of rough tweaking is possible with packages, but rapidly becomes impossible if an application has more than one or two different compile time options. The licensing conditions of some software distributions forbid binary distribution. They must be distributed as source code. Some people do not trust binary distributions. At least with source code, you can (in theory) read through it and look for potential problems yourself. If you have local patches, you will need the source in order to apply them. Some people like having code around, so they can read it if they get bored, hack it, borrow from it (license permitting, of course), and so on. To keep track of updated ports, subscribe to freebsd-ports. The remainder of this chapter will explain how to use packages and ports to install and manage third party software on FreeBSD. Finding your application Before you can install any applications you need to know what you want, and what the application is called. FreeBSD's list of available applications is growing all the time. Currently there are over &os.numports; applications available as packages or ports. There are a number of ways to find what you want. The FreeBSD web site maintains an up-to-date searchable list of all the available applications, at http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/. The name space is divided in to categories, and you may either search for an application by name (if you know it), or you can list all the applications available in a category. Dan Langille maintains FreshPorts, at http://www.freshports.org/. FreshPorts tracks changes to the applications in the ports tree as they happen, and allows you to watch one or more ports, and will send you an e-mail when they are updated. If you do not know the name of the application you want, try using a site like FreshMeat (http://www.freshmeat.net/) or AppWatch (http://www.appwatch.com/) to find an application, then check back at the FreeBSD site to see if the application has been ported yet. Chern Lee Contributed Using the Packages System Installing a Package packages installing pkg_add You can use the &man.pkg.add.1; utility to install a FreeBSD software package from a local file or from a server on the network. Downloading a package and then installing it locally &prompt.root; ftp ftp2.freebsd.org Connected to ftp2.freebsd.org. 220 ftp2.freebsd.org FTP server (Version 6.00LS) ready. 331 Guest login ok, send your email address as password. 230- 230- This machine is in Vienna, VA, USA, hosted by Verio. 230- Questions? E-mail freebsd@vienna.verio.net. 230- 230- 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> cd /pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/irc 250 CWD command successful. ftp> get xchat-1.7.1.tgz local: xchat-1.7.1.tgz remote: xchat-1.7.1.tgz 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'xchat-1.7.1.tgz' (471488 bytes). 100% |**************************************************| 460 KB 00:00 ETA 226 Transfer complete. 471488 bytes received in 5.37 seconds (85.70 KB/s) ftp> exit &prompt.root; pkg_add xchat-1.7.1.tgz &prompt.root; If you don't have a source of local packages (such as a FreeBSD CDROM set) then it will probably be easier to use the -r option to &man.pkg.add.1;. This will cause the utility to automatically determine the correct object format and release and then to fetch and install the package from an FTP site. pkg_add &prompt.root; pkg_add -r xchat-1.7.1 This would download the correct package and add it without any further user intervention. Package files are distributed in .tgz format. You can find them at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/, or on the FreeBSD CDROM distribution. Every CD on the FreeBSD 4-CD set (and PowerPak, etc) contains packages in the /packages directory. The layout of the packages is similar to that of the /usr/ports tree. Each category has its own directory, and every package can be found within the All directory. The directory structure of the package system is homologous to that of the ports; they work with each other to form the entire package/port system. Deleting a Package &prompt.root pkg_delete xchat-1.7.1 pkg_delete packages deleting &man.pkg.delete.1; is the utility for removing previously installed software package distributions. Managing packages packages managing &man.pkg.info.1; a utility that lists and describes the various packages installed. pkg_info &prompt.root pkg_info -cvsup-bin-16.1 A general network file distribution system optimized for CV +cvsup-16.1 A general network file distribution system optimized for CV docbook-1.2 Meta-port for the different versions of the DocBook DTD ... &man.pkg.version.1; a utility that summarizes the versions of all installed packages. It compares the package version to the current version found in the ports tree. &prompt.root pkg_version -cvsup-bin = +cvsup = docbook = ... The symbols in the second column indicate the relative age of the installed version and the version available in the local ports tree. Symbol Meaning = The version of the installed package matches that of the one found in the local ports tree. < The installed version is older then the one available in the ports tree. >The installed version is newer than the one found in the local ports tree. (local ports tree is probably out of date) ?The installed package cannot be found in the ports index. *There are multiple versions of the package. Miscellaneous &man.pkg.add.1; &man.pkg.delete.1; &man.pkg.info.1; &man.pkg.version.1; &man.pkg.create.1; All package information is stored within the /var/db/pkg directory. The listing of contents and descriptions of each package can be found within files in this directory. Using the Ports Collection The following sections provide basic instructions on using the ports collection to install or remove programs from your system. Installing Ports ports installing The first thing that should be explained when it comes to the Ports collection is what is actually meant by a skeleton. In a nutshell, a port skeleton is a minimal set of files that are needed for a program to compile and install cleanly on FreeBSD. Each port skeleton includes: A Makefile. The Makefile contains various statements that specify how the application should be compiled and where it should be installed on your system A distinfo file. This file contains information about the files that must be downloaded to build the port, and checksums, to ensure that those files have not been corrupted during the download. A files directory. This directory contains patches to make the program compile and install on your FreeBSD system. Patches are basically small files that specify changes to particular files. They are in plain text format, and basically say Remove line 10 or Change line 26 to this .... Patches are also known as diffs because they are generated by the diff program. This directory may also contain other files used in building the port. A pkg-comment file. This is a one-line description of the program. A pkg-descr file. This is a more detailed, often multiple-line, description of the program. A pkg-plist file. This is a list of all the files that will be installed by the port. It also tells the ports system what files to remove upon deinstallation. Now that you have enough background information to know what the Ports collection is used for, you are ready to install your first port. There are two ways this can be done, and each is explained below. Before we get into that however, you will need to choose a port to install. There are a few ways to do this, with the easiest method being the ports listing on the FreeBSD web site. You can browse through the ports listed there or use the search function on the site. Each port also includes a description so you can read a bit about each port before deciding to install it. Another method is to use the whereis command. To use whereis, simply type whereis <program you want to install> at the prompt, and if it is found on your system, you will be told where it is, like so: &prompt.root; whereis xchat xchat: /usr/ports/irc/xchat This tells us that xchat (an irc client) can be found in the /usr/ports/irc/xchat directory. Yet another way of finding a particular port is by using the Ports collection's built-in search mechanism. To use the search feature, you will need to be in the /usr/ports directory. Once in that directory, run make search key=program-name where program-name is the name of the program you want to find. For example, if you were looking for xchat: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make search key=xchat Port: xchat-1.3.8 Path: /usr/ports/irc/xchat Info: An X11 IRC client using the GTK+ toolkit, and optionally, GNOME Maint: jim@FreeBSD.org Index: irc B-deps: XFree86-3.3.5 bzip2-0.9.5d gettext-0.10.35 giflib-4.1.0 glib-1.2.6 gmake-3.77 gtk-1.2.6 imlib-1.9.8 jpeg-6b png-1.0.3 tiff-3.5.1 R-deps: XFree86-3.3.5 gettext-0.10.35 giflib-4.1.0 glib-1.2.6 gtk-1.2.6 imlib-1.9.8 jpeg-6b png-1.0.3 tiff-3.5.1 The part of the output you want to pay particular attention to is the Path: line, since that tells you where to find it. The other information provided is not needed in order to install the port directly, so it will not be covered here. You must be the root user to install ports. Now that you have found a port you would like to install, you are ready to do the actual installation. Installing ports from a CDROM ports installing from CDROM As you may have guessed from the title, everything described in this section assumes you have a FreeBSD CDROM set. If you do not, you can order one from the FreeBSD Mall. Assuming that your FreeBSD CDROM is in the drive and is mounted on /cdrom (and the mount point must be /cdrom), you are ready to install the port. To begin, change directories to the directory where the port you want to install lives: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/irc/xchat Once inside the xchat directory, you will see the port skeleton. The next step is to compile (also called build) the port. This is done by simply typing make at the prompt. Once you have done so, you should see something like this: &prompt.root; make >> xchat-1.3.8.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist on this system. >> Attempting to fetch from file:/cdrom/ports/distfiles/. ===> Extracting for xchat-1.3.8 >> Checksum OK for xchat-1.3.8.tar.bz2. ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on executable: bzip2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on executable: gmake - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: gtk12.2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: Imlib.5 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ===> Patching for xchat-1.3.8 ===> Applying FreeBSD patches for xchat-1.3.8 ===> Configuring for xchat-1.3.8 ... [configure output snipped] ... ===> Building for xchat-1.3.8 ... [compilation snipped] ... &prompt.root; Take notice that once the compile is complete you are returned to your prompt. The next step is to install the port. In order to install it, you simply need to tack one word onto the make command, and that word is install: &prompt.root; make install ===> Installing for xchat-1.3.8 ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: gtk12.2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: Imlib.5 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ... [install routines snipped] ... ===> Generating temporary packing list ===> Installing xchat docs in /usr/X11R6/share/doc/xchat ===> Registering installation for xchat-1.3.8 &prompt.root; Once you are returned to your prompt, you should be able to run the application you just installed. You can save an extra step by just running make install instead of make and make install as two separate steps. Please be aware that the licenses of a few ports do not allow for inclusion on the CDROM. This could be for various reasons, including things such as registration form needs to be filled out before downloading, if redistribution is not allowed, and so on. If you wish to install a port not included on the CDROM, you will need to be online in order to do so (see the next section). Installing ports from the Internet As with the last section, this section makes an assumption that you have a working Internet connection. If you do not, you will need to do the CDROM installation. Installing a port from the Internet is done exactly the same way as it would be if you were installing from a CDROM. The only difference between the two is that the program's source code is downloaded from the Internet instead of pulled from the CDROM. The steps involved are identical: &prompt.root; make install >> xchat-1.3.8.tar.bz2 doesn't seem to exist on this system. >> Attempting to fetch from http://xchat.org/files/v1.3/. Receiving xchat-1.3.8.tar.bz2 (305543 bytes): 100% 305543 bytes transferred in 2.9 seconds (102.81 Kbytes/s) ===> Extracting for xchat-1.3.8 >> Checksum OK for xchat-1.3.8.tar.bz2. ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on executable: bzip2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on executable: gmake - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: gtk12.2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: Imlib.5 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ===> Patching for xchat-1.3.8 ===> Applying FreeBSD patches for xchat-1.3.8 ===> Configuring for xchat-1.3.8 ... [configure output snipped] ... ===> Building for xchat-1.3.8 ... [compilation snipped] ... ===> Installing for xchat-1.3.8 ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: gtk12.2 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: Imlib.5 - found ===> xchat-1.3.8 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ... [install routines snipped] ... ===> Generating temporary packing list ===> Installing xchat docs in /usr/X11R6/share/doc/xchat ===> Registering installation for xchat-1.3.8 &prompt.root; As you can see, the only difference is the line that tells you where the system is fetching the port from. That about does it for installing ports onto your system. In the next section you will learn how to remove a port from your system. Removing Installed Ports ports removing Now that you know how to install ports, you are probably wondering how to remove them, just in case you install one and later on you decide that you installed the wrong port. The next few paragraphs will cover just that. Now we will remove our previous example (which was xchat for those of you not paying attention). As with installing ports, the first thing you must do is change to the port directory, which if you remember was /usr/ports/irc/xchat. After you change directories, you are ready to uninstall xchat. This is done with the make deinstall command (makes sense right?): &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/irc/xchat &prompt.root; make deinstall ===> Deinstalling for xchat-1.3.8 &prompt.root; That was easy enough. You have now managed to remove xchat from your system. If you would like to reinstall it, you can do so by running make reinstall from the /usr/ports/irc/xchat directory. Troubleshooting The following sections cover some of the more frequently asked questions about the Ports collection and some basic troubleshooting techniques, and what do to if a port is broken. Some Questions and Answers I thought this was going to be a discussion about modems??! Ah, you must be thinking of the serial ports on the back of your computer. We are using port here to mean the result of porting a program from one version of Unix to another. What is a patch? A patch is a small file that specifies how to go from one version of a file to another. It contains plain text, and basically says things like delete line 23, add these two lines after line 468, or change line 197 to this. They are also known as diffs because they are generated by the diff program. tarball What is all this about tarballs? It is a file ending in .tar, or with variations such as .tar.gz, .tar.Z, .tar.bz2, and even .tgz. Basically, it is a directory tree that has been archived into a single file (.tar) and optionally compressed (.gz). This technique was originally used for Tape ARchives (hence the name tar), but it is a widely used way of distributing program source code around the Internet. You can see what files are in them, or even extract them yourself by using the standard Unix tar program, which comes with the base FreeBSD system, like this: &prompt.user; tar tvzf foobar.tar.gz &prompt.user; tar xzvf foobar.tar.gz &prompt.user; tar tvf foobar.tar &prompt.user; tar xvf foobar.tar checksum And a checksum? It is a number generated by adding up all the data in the file you want to check. If any of the characters change, the checksum will no longer be equal to the total, so a simple comparison will allow you to spot the difference. I did what you said for compiling ports from a CDROM and it worked great until I tried to install the kermit port. &prompt.root; make install >> cku190.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist on this system. >> Attempting to fetch from ftp://kermit.columbia.edu/kermit/archives/. Why can it not be found? Have I got a dud CDROM? As was explained in the compiling ports from CDROM section, some ports cannot be put on the CDROM set due to licensing restrictions. Kermit is an example of that. The licensing terms for kermit do not allow us to put the tarball for it on the CDROM, so you will have to fetch it by hand—sorry! The reason why you got all those error messages was because you were not connected to the Internet at the time. Once you have downloaded it from any of the MASTER_SITES (listed in the Makefile), you can restart the install process. I did that, but when I tried to put it into /usr/ports/distfiles I got some error about not having permission. The ports mechanism looks for the tarball in /usr/ports/distfiles, but you will not be able to copy anything there because it is symlinked to the CDROM, which is read-only. You can tell it to look somewhere else by doing: &prompt.root; make DISTDIR=/where/you/put/it install Does the ports scheme only work if you have everything in /usr/ports? My system administrator says I must put everything under /u/people/guests/wurzburger, but it does not seem to work. You can use the PORTSDIR and PREFIX variables to tell the ports mechanism to use different directories. For instance, &prompt.root; make PORTSDIR=/u/people/guests/wurzburger/ports install will compile the port in /u/people/guests/wurzburger/ports and install everything under /usr/local. &prompt.root; make PREFIX=/u/people/guests/wurzburger/local install will compile it in /usr/ports and install it in /u/people/guests/wurzburger/local. And of course, &prompt.root; make PORTSDIR=../ports PREFIX=../local install will combine the two (it is too long to write fully on the page, but it should give you the general idea). Some ports that use &man.imake.1; (a part of the X Windows System) don't work well with PREFIX, and will insist on installing under /usr/X11R6. Similarly, some Perl ports ignore PREFIX and install in the Perl tree. Making these ports respect PREFIX is a difficult or impossible job. If you do not fancy typing all that in every time you install a port, it is a good idea to put these variables into your environment. Read the man page for your shell for instructions on doing so. I do not have a FreeBSD CDROM, but I would like to have all the tarballs handy on my system so I do not have to wait for a download every time I install a port. Is there any way to get them all at once? To get every single tarball for the Ports collection, do: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make fetch For all the tarballs for a single ports directory, do: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/directory &prompt.root; make fetch and for just one port—well, you have probably guessed already. I know it is probably faster to fetch the tarballs from one of the FreeBSD mirror sites close by. Is there any way to tell the port to fetch them from servers other than the ones listed in the MASTER_SITES? Yes. If you know, for example, that ftp.FreeBSD.org is much closer to you than the sites listed in MASTER_SITES, do as follows: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/directory &prompt.root; make MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE= \ ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/ fetch I want to know what files make is going to need before it tries to pull them down. make fetch-list will display a list of the files needed for a port. Is there any way to stop the port from compiling? I want to do some hacking on the source before I install it, but it is a bit tiresome to watch it and hit control-C every time. Doing make extract will stop it after it has fetched and extracted the source code. I am trying to make my own port and I want to be able to stop it compiling until I have had a chance to see if my patches worked properly. Is there something like make extract, but for patches? Yep, make patch is what you want. You will probably find the PATCH_DEBUG option useful as well. And by the way, thank you for your efforts! I have heard that some compiler options can cause bugs. Is this true? How can I make sure that I compile ports with the right settings? Yes, with version 2.6.3 of gcc (the version shipped with FreeBSD 2.1.0 and 2.1.5), the option could result in buggy code unless you used the option as well. (Most of the ports do not use ). You should be able to specify the compiler options used by something like: &prompt.root; make CFLAGS='-O2 -fno-strength-reduce' install or by editing /etc/make.conf, but unfortunately not all ports respect this. The surest way is to do make configure, then go into the source directory and inspect the Makefiles by hand, but this can get tedious if the source has lots of sub-directories, each with their own Makefiles. The default FreeBSD compiler options are quite conservative, so if you have not changed them you should not have any problems. There are so many ports it is hard to find the one I want. Is there a list anywhere of what ports are available? Look in the INDEX file in /usr/ports. If you would like to search the ports collection for a keyword, you can do that too. For example, you can find ports relevant to the LISP programming language using: &prompt.user; cd /usr/ports &prompt.user; make search key=lisp I went to install the foo port but the system suddenly stopped compiling it and starting compiling the bar port. What is going on? The foo port needs something that is supplied with bar — for instance, if foo uses graphics, bar might have a library with useful graphics processing routines. Or bar might be a tool that is needed to compile the foo port. I installed the grizzle program from the ports and frankly it is a complete waste of disk space. I want to delete it but I do not know where it put all the files. Any clues? No problem, just do: &prompt.root; pkg_delete grizzle-6.5 Alternatively, you can do: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/somewhere/grizzle &prompt.root; make deinstall Hang on a minute, you have to know the version number to use that command. You do not seriously expect me to remember that, do you?? Not at all, you can find it out by doing: &prompt.root; pkg_info -I 'grizzle*' Information for grizzle-6.5: grizzle-6.5 - the combined piano tutorial, LOGO interpreter and shoot 'em up arcade game. Talking of disk space, the ports directory seems to be taking up an awful lot of room. Is it safe to go in there and delete things? Yes, if you have installed the program and are fairly certain you will not need the source again, there is no point in keeping it hanging around. The best way to do this is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make clean which will go through all the ports subdirectories and delete everything except the skeletons for each port. I tried that and it still left all those tarballs or whatever you called them in the distfiles directory. Can I delete those as well? Yes, if you are sure you have finished with them, those can go as well. They can be removed manually, or by using make distclean. I like having lots and lots of programs to play with. Is there any way of installing all the ports in one go? Just do: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make install Be careful, as some ports may install files with the same name. If you install two graphics ports and they both install /usr/local/bin/plot then you will obviously have problems. OK, I tried that, but I thought it would take a very long time so I went to bed and left it to get on with it. When I looked at the computer this morning, it had only done three and a half ports. Did something go wrong? No, the problem is that some of the ports need to ask you questions that we cannot answer for you (e.g., Do you want to print on A4 or US letter sized paper?) and they need to have someone on hand to answer them. I really do not want to spend all day staring at the monitor. Any better ideas? OK, do this before you go to bed/work/the local park: &prompt.root cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make -DBATCH install This will install every port that does not require user input. Then, when you come back, do: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports &prompt.root; make -DINTERACTIVE install to finish the job. At work, we are using frobble, which is in your Ports collection, but we have altered it quite a bit to get it to do what we need. Is there any way of making our own packages, so we can distribute it more easily around our sites? No problem, assuming you know how to make patches for your changes: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/somewhere/frobble &prompt.root; make extract &prompt.root; cd work/frobble-2.8 [Apply your patches] &prompt.root; cd ../.. &prompt.root; make package This ports stuff is really clever. I am desperate to find out how you did it. What is the secret? Nothing secret about it at all, just look at the bsd.port.mk and bsd.port.subdir.mk files in your makefiles directory. (Readers with an aversion to intricate shell-scripts are advised not to follow this link...) Help! This port is broken! If you come across a port that doesn't work for you, there are a few things you can do, including: Fix it! The Porter's Handbook should help you do this. Gripe—by email only! Send email to the maintainer of the port first. Type make maintainer or read the Makefile to find the maintainer's email address. Remember to include the name and version of the port (send the $FreeBSD: line from the Makefile) and the output leading up to the error when you email the maintainer. If you do not get a response from the maintainer, you can use send-pr to submit a bug report. Grab the package from an ftp site near you. The master package collection is on ftp.FreeBSD.org in the packages directory, but be sure to check your local mirror first! These are more likely to work than trying to compile from source and are a lot faster as well. Use the &man.pkg.add.1; program to install the package on your system. Advanced Topics The documentation that was here has been moved to its own Porter's Handbook for ease of reference. Please go there if you wish to create and submit your own ports.