FreeBSD ports

tribble

I've just whacked on FreeBSD 4.10 (latest stable) onto a Celeron 466, 96MB PC133, 330GB box.

This is the first time I've used a non-windows/linux box (except funky QNX and a failed attempt at openBSD that Merc gave me years ago).

I wan't to use it as a file server so I
cd /usr/ports/net/samba
make

I wait, wait, wait - this is taking forever, at first it fails to find the files on dozens of different servers and when it does eventually find a live one, it has to ftp a sh1t load of other files (fair enough if they are descrepancies).

I've left it alone for an hour now (on a 512kb DSL) and it still doesn't look like finishing anytime soon.

Basically, my question is..

Is this what I am to expect for all port installs on FreeBSD?

tribble

Hecate

The short answer is no. I've had one or two niggles with the ports system on freebsd but in general its one of the most robust port/packaging systems I've come across on any UNIX system.

Try cvsup'ing to the latest ports tree:

cvsup -g -L 2 <supfile>

You can find sample supfiles for the ports collection and system in /usr/src/share/examples/cvsup/, you usually just need to edit it to point it at a local cvsup mirror. If you're still getting grief, and if you have the freebsd cd set, you can just install the samba binaries as a package from them. Run /stand/sysinstall as root, go into the Configure > Packages menu, select CD/DVD as the package source (not sure which disk samba is on but it is on one of them) and samba should be in there. In fact this is my preferred method of installing packages because you don't need to download anything, and its all prebuilt.

hostyle

The one time I installed FreeBSD (that it worked, but not for long, but thats my hardware for you) I found the ports downloads to be painfully slow. The downloads aren't usually that big, but very, very slow for some reason.

So it shouldnt be eating into your bandwidth cap or anything, if thats what you;re worried about

nadir

I dont use bsd im one of those gentoo freaks, but if its time waiting for source to compile i know what you mean, heh.
well to be honest, it bugged me at the start, but now i dont mind at all, I update my machine once a month, it takes about 5 hours to install all the updates, but during that time the machine is basically functional except maybe gaming, it might slow down during some of the compiles, a very small price to pay for such a stable system. Im also getting into the whole source buzz, it really is wicked, just thinking of all it does, There are many binaries available that arnt in the ports system as well, if its some thing you really need immediately. Granted installing it at the start can take a long time, when you have all that code to compile just to get the box set up, but again its just for a little while at the start, once its all set up , your sorted really.

QBall

The reason you're getting lots of dead URLs in the fetch stage is probably due to your ports tree being out of date (as Hecate suggested).

cvsup is your friend. You'll have to install it from the ports collection first though (:)) so:

cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup
make install clean

Then make a supfile, the following is what I use:

*default host=cvsup.ie.FreeBSD.org
*default tag=.
*default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress

ports-all

Just stick that in a file and then do the following (as root):

cvsup -g /path/to/supfile

The -L 2 that Hecate suggested gives you more detail about what is going on, so if you're curious, stick that in.

Once that has run, your ports system should be up to date, so you should get less dead URLs, and things might go a bit quicker. The reason you were getting slow downloads could be linked to the fact that you were getting the slow mirrors on the other side of the world which were out of date along with your ports tree. If you're up to date, then there'll often be a HEAnet mirror which will be much faster.

tribble

Cool, cheers lads - It all worked out in the end (though I still have yet to configure samba.conf).



tribble

tribble

i'll whack in your scripts now Qball and see how it works out.