Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 23:49:23 +0200, mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: thanks alot for that. i mean, apart from your general overview of freebsd (system, project and community), which gives me an idea how things are done, what's happeniing and where things are, you really put me at ease with trying to figure out these warnings, or at least what to expect and where to start - i wasn't sure if it was up to my setup or what. although i don't know if you misunderstood my saying *fix them* as in i should setup my system properly, or as in get to bug-tracing and the like; which is still out of my expertise and jurisdiction. Well, I don't want you to overload your mind with so many new things that BSD will seem a fearsome thing. Let me just say that If you see compiler warnings when you build Ports from their sources, it is okay. Now, if you *do* find interesting things while installing ports, and if you feel inclined to help, you are welcome to jump in and help. Maybe not during the first few weeks, may be not even during the first couple of years. Just keep in mind that if you start thinking about things like OMG, why isn't option this tunable like _this_? and you have ideas about improving FreeBSD, the team behind it is always open to new ideas, comments, suggestions or even simple reports like I did A, B and then C, but program D crashed with the error message E :-) or was that wishfull thinking? it is something i want to figure out eventually, but at the moment i'm still so fascinated by everything (system, community) that i'm trying to catch up on as much as i can. Hehe, that's understandable. Keep having fun, Giorgos ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 22:35:40 +0200
mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right?
Welcome! :)
yes and no :P I like portsnap. faster.
For my ports, i run this script ( ~/bin/update_ports.sh)
#!/bin/sh
sudo portsnap fetch sudo portsnap update
---
( sudo is the port security/sudo and it allows for fine grained control
root-access to certain commands only )
There are 2 ports that will help you with management of your ports/packages -
ports-mgmt/portupgrade and ports-mgmt/portmaster ( which
means /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade/ , etc... ) - they can tell you what
needs updating,etc (can't remember if it is in the handbook...)
Anyway, for my src tree:
1) my /etc/make.conf has :
[...]
SUP_UPDATE=YES
SUP=/usr/bin/csup
SUPFLAGS=-g -L 2 -P m
SUPFILE=/usr/local/etc/standard-supfile
NO_PORTSUPDATE=true
[...]
-
the NO_PORTSUPDATE=true is so the std supfile doesn't pull in ports too. (maybe
i don't need it anymore, but it really doesn't break anything).
The /usr/local/etc/standard-supfile is :
*default host=cvsup5.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
## next line can have a date to peg src tree to a particular date :
date=2007.12.05.01.00.00
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_7
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
src-all
--
and to update,
cd /usr/src sudo make update
Mind you, I am tracking STABLE. and use this because i have a custom kernel
(just because i can :P ). For those of my machines which use GENERIC,i just use
freebsd-update as explained by Giorgios already.
Any issues, just shoot more emails :)
Have fun!
B
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
Quantum Logic Chicken:
The chicken is distributed probabalistically on all sides of the
road until you observe it on the side of your course.
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 04:06:40PM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 22:35:40 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right? Welcome! :) yes and no :P I like portsnap. faster. For my ports, i run this script ( ~/bin/update_ports.sh) #!/bin/sh sudo portsnap fetch sudo portsnap update [snip] Did you know you can specifiy fetch and update at the same time? sudo portsnap fetch update ...and save calling portsnap twice :) frase pgpdgJvWmlO6K.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sunday 03 August 2008 03:18:23 Fraser Tweedale wrote: On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 04:06:40PM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 22:35:40 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right? Welcome! :) yes and no :P I like portsnap. faster. For my ports, i run this script ( ~/bin/update_ports.sh) #!/bin/sh sudo portsnap fetch sudo portsnap update [snip] Did you know you can specifiy fetch and update at the same time? sudo portsnap fetch update ...and save calling portsnap twice :) frase And do it via cron? [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]% grep port /etc/crontab # keep the port index updated and e-mail me a list of ports to update 0 3 * * * rootportsnap -I cron update pkg_version -vIL= (Im pretty sure I took that from the The Best of FreeBSD Basics but I can't find the original article ... I know it's buried in here somewhere though: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/ct/15... so .. Credit goes to Dru Lavigne. :) ) That results on a daily e-mail from cron that looks like this: Cron [EMAIL PROTECTED] portsnap -I cron update pkg_version -vIL= From: Cron Daemon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2008-08-01 03:07 ImageMagick-6.4.1.8needs updating (index has 6.4.2.5) en-openoffice.org-US-2.4.0_3 needs updating (index has 2.4.1) ffmpeg-2007.10.04_4needs updating (index has 2008.07.27_1) ghostscript-gpl-8.61_4 needs updating (index has 8.62_3) gnupg-2.0.9_1 needs updating (index has 2.0.9_2) gnutls-2.4.1 needs updating (index has 2.4.1_1) kaffeine-0.8.6_1 needs updating (index has 0.8.7) kdegraphics-3.5.8_2needs updating (index has 3.5.8_3) libgphoto2-2.4.2 needs updating (index has 2.4.2_1) libxine-1.1.12_1 needs updating (index has 1.1.14) linux-doom3-1.1.1286,0 needs updating (index has 1.3.1.1304,1) pciids-20080312needs updating (index has 20080726) portmaster-2.5 needs updating (index has 2.6) samba-libsmbclient-3.0.30 needs updating (index has 3.0.31_1) speex-1.2.b2,1 needs updating (index has 1.2.r1_1,1) Then I get to decide whether or not to update a port, every port or do nothing and when to do it :D BTW: I use csup for the base system and portsnap and and friends for the ports collection :) Welcome and: have fun ! -- Blessings Gonzalo Nemmi ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sunday 03 August 2008 05:41:19 you wrote: On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 05:31:35AM -0300, Gonzalo Nemmi wrote: On Sunday 03 August 2008 03:18:23 Fraser Tweedale wrote: On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 04:06:40PM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 22:35:40 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right? Welcome! :) yes and no :P I like portsnap. faster. For my ports, i run this script ( ~/bin/update_ports.sh) #!/bin/sh sudo portsnap fetch sudo portsnap update [snip] Did you know you can specifiy fetch and update at the same time? sudo portsnap fetch update ...and save calling portsnap twice :) frase And do it via cron? [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]% grep port /etc/crontab # keep the port index updated and e-mail me a list of ports to update 0 3 * * * rootportsnap -I cron update pkg_version -vIL= (Im pretty sure I took that from the The Best of FreeBSD Basics but I can't find the original article ... I know it's buried in here somewhere though: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/ct/15... so .. Credit goes to Dru Lavigne. :) ) That results on a daily e-mail from cron that looks like this: Cron [EMAIL PROTECTED] portsnap -I cron update pkg_version -vIL= From: Cron Daemon [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2008-08-01 03:07 ImageMagick-6.4.1.8needs updating (index has 6.4.2.5) en-openoffice.org-US-2.4.0_3 needs updating (index has 2.4.1) ffmpeg-2007.10.04_4needs updating (index has 2008.07.27_1) ghostscript-gpl-8.61_4 needs updating (index has 8.62_3) gnupg-2.0.9_1 needs updating (index has 2.0.9_2) gnutls-2.4.1 needs updating (index has 2.4.1_1) kaffeine-0.8.6_1 needs updating (index has 0.8.7) kdegraphics-3.5.8_2needs updating (index has 3.5.8_3) libgphoto2-2.4.2 needs updating (index has 2.4.2_1) libxine-1.1.12_1 needs updating (index has 1.1.14) linux-doom3-1.1.1286,0 needs updating (index has 1.3.1.1304,1) pciids-20080312needs updating (index has 20080726) portmaster-2.5 needs updating (index has 2.6) samba-libsmbclient-3.0.30 needs updating (index has 3.0.31_1) speex-1.2.b2,1 needs updating (index has 1.2.r1_1,1) Then I get to decide whether or not to update a port, every port or do nothing and when to do it :D BTW: I use csup for the base system and portsnap and and friends for the ports collection :) Welcome and: have fun ! -- Blessings Gonzalo Nemmi Well, yes. `portsnap cron update` if running from cron. My point was that you can do fetch and update in one operation :) Oh sure ! But check this out, this is interesting (at least for me): by using the -I flag I only update the INDEX file and not the whole port tree. From man portsnap: -I For the update command, update INDEX files, but not the rest of the ports tree. Now why would I want to do that? Well .. bandwith basically.. since Im running portsnap cron update via cron, on a daily basis, I don't want to hammer the repos for no real reason ;) By using the -I flag, I can get a report with the info I need, and only then, when there's a really good reason for it, I update the ports tree. I too use csup for src and portsnap for ports. Portsnap is (at least in my experience) far faster and more bandwith efficient. 100% agreed. -- Blessings Gonzalo Nemmi ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 05:57:00 -0300 Gonzalo Nemmi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 03 August 2008 05:41:19 you wrote: Well, yes. `portsnap cron update` if running from cron. My point was that you can do fetch and update in one operation :) Oh sure ! But check this out, this is interesting (at least for me): by using the -I flag I only update the INDEX file and not the whole port tree. From man portsnap: -I For the update command, update INDEX files, but not the rest of the ports tree. Now why would I want to do that? Well .. bandwith basically.. since Im running portsnap cron update via cron, on a daily basis, I don't want to hammer the repos for no real reason ;) I don't think that makes a difference, the -I option prevents portsnap from updating the ports tree from the local compressed snapshot, but AFAIK you're still updating the snapshot from the server. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
Norberto Meijome wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 22:35:40 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right? There are 2 ports that will help you with management of your ports/packages - ports-mgmt/portupgrade and ports-mgmt/portmaster ( which means /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade/ , etc... ) - they can tell you what needs updating,etc (can't remember if it is in the handbook...) three on my machine, the two above and ports-mgmt/portmanager. I use csup and portmanager - it's simple and very thorough. Chris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 15:50:48 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: firstly - i have installed kde3 and xfce4 from packages (like most of it - xorg,etc) and have tried updates before with different results. i don't mind messing things up, as long as i can somehow surf or check mails - but would like to do a *proper* update. firstly, are [freebsd-update] and [cvsup stable src.all] necessary before installing anything from ports? freebsd-update does a binary update to the base system, csup of src-all is for fetching source to rebuild the base system. You can build ports and base independently BTW you should be using csup (in the base system), not cvsup. cvsup was written in modulo2, csup is a rewrite in C with fewer dependencies Also if you are new to FreeBSD, you should probably not be using a stable branch, these are stable development branches. Consider using a security branch like RELENG_7_0, and later moving to RELENG_7_1 and so on. and are ports considered stable or current? or are they automatically matched to the installed version? There's only one version of ports, the builds automatically adapt to your basesystem version. also, do portsnap and cvsup ports do the same thing? i've tried cvsup exactly after portsnap and it still seems to edit/update the ports tree. They're more or less the same. portsnap is faster, but it's for ports only and is less flexible. why i'm confused is that i get alot of warnings when many ports try to build, and many hiccups in apps once they are installed, and i don't know which way to go --- gcc manual and fixing my environment, build options, etc,, or if it still something in the actual ports? You don't need to set much, if anything. Read the entries in /usr/ports/UPDATING before doing an upgrade. Most build problems will fix themselves within a day or two if you resync the ports tree. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Saturday 02 August 2008 17:32:53 RW wrote: On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 15:50:48 +0200 mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: firstly - i have installed kde3 and xfce4 from packages (like most of it - xorg,etc) and have tried updates before with different results. i don't mind messing things up, as long as i can somehow surf or check mails - but would like to do a *proper* update. firstly, are [freebsd-update] and [cvsup stable src.all] necessary before installing anything from ports? freebsd-update does a binary update to the base system, csup of src-all is for fetching source to rebuild the base system. You can build ports and base independently BTW you should be using csup (in the base system), not cvsup. cvsup was written in modulo2, csup is a rewrite in C with fewer dependencies Also if you are new to FreeBSD, you should probably not be using a stable branch, these are stable development branches. Consider using a security branch like RELENG_7_0, and later moving to RELENG_7_1 and so on. and are ports considered stable or current? or are they automatically matched to the installed version? There's only one version of ports, the builds automatically adapt to your basesystem version. also, do portsnap and cvsup ports do the same thing? i've tried cvsup exactly after portsnap and it still seems to edit/update the ports tree. They're more or less the same. portsnap is faster, but it's for ports only and is less flexible. why i'm confused is that i get alot of warnings when many ports try to build, and many hiccups in apps once they are installed, and i don't know which way to go --- gcc manual and fixing my environment, build options, etc,, or if it still something in the actual ports? You don't need to set much, if anything. Read the entries in /usr/ports/UPDATING before doing an upgrade. Most build problems will fix themselves within a day or two if you resync the ports tree. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] damn, thanks - I had mistaken stable to be what is release; i had come across the difference at some point but didn't realise when i tried cvsup (which i also mistook to be more recent than csup). I only tried csup on ports once and wasn't too sure i should since the handbook or somewhere mentioned the ports tree should be empty the first time you run it; and got the impression you should only use either or (csup vs portsnap). anyhow i think that only my nvidia driver instructions mentioned it relies on what i think are system sources (kernel related - if i'm not mistaken) - but i haven't touched that yet. I hate to bother any further but have one thing to clarify about building attempts - when building anything, if that's ok. I only have a basic understanding of C so far, and can't really tell how critical warnings are - such as undefined this and that, defined but not used...etc, when building a port. should i stop those and see how i should fix them or let them proceed as long as they're not errors? I can live with my current system for now, but have a few things i need to update eventually. again, many thanks for the reply and clarifying. mcassar ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
mcassar wrote: [snip] I only tried csup on ports once and wasn't too sure i should since the handbook or somewhere mentioned the ports tree should be empty the first time you run it; and got the impression you should only use either or (csup vs portsnap). I can only speak to cvsup or csup (which I use) but I'd like to point out a very common mistake wrt either. It is a good idea to have two different sup files, as they will need to download different collections of material. For example this: *default release=cvs tag=RELENG_7_0 src-all combination will pull down the system sources for the security updates to RELEASE. Read in the Handbook about the tags and collections. I keep a separate sup file for keeping the ports tree updated and the difference is here: *default release=cvs tag=. ports-all Please notice that if you use the tag=. with src-all you will pull down HEAD, which is the bleeding edge of development and not what a beginner should be using. But when used with the ports collection you will get an up to date ports tree. anyhow i think that only my nvidia driver instructions mentioned it relies on what i think are system sources (kernel related - if i'm not mistaken) - but i haven't touched that yet. Generally speaking before building something like the nvidia drivers using the ports system the best first step is to refresh the ports tree. With all dependencies tracked and updated you'll likely have more success. Notice, for instance, that the nvidia driver depends on having what we call the linuxulator installed. It'll do this for you but you may have to enter a line in your /boot/loader.conf to ensure the linux.ko kernel module gets loaded every time at boot. You will usually see some more instructions at the end if you need to do anything special. Also, be aware that the nvidia driver is only currently working with i386, _not_ amd64. Even if only using packages you should _still_ update the ports tree, as the package system relies on it for dependency tracking as well. I hate to bother any further but have one thing to clarify about building attempts - when building anything, if that's ok. I only have a basic understanding of C so far, and can't really tell how critical warnings are - such as undefined this and that, defined but not used...etc, when building a port. should i stop those and see how i should fix them or let them proceed as long as they're not errors? I can live with my current system for now, but have a few things i need to update eventually. When you use ports and compile stuff, you may see all manners of warnings, errors, and sundry garbage spewing forth from the compiler. Most of this, most of the time, is benign and not something to get overly concerned about as it is fairly normal. The exception is if the build errors out and completely quits, and there is an error sequence that will indicate whereabouts it bombed. Sometimes ports do get broken and need fixing, but most ports have a person who maintains them. If/when many people see the same error someone usually notifies the port maintainer and he/she then looks into fixing it. But generally speaking, if the build completes and runs without segfaulting just ignore what you may have seen scrolling by while building. Most of the time it's just noise. :-) -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Saturday 02 August 2008 19:38:20 Michael Powell wrote: I can only speak to cvsup or csup (which I use) but I'd like to point out a very common mistake wrt either. It is a good idea to have two different sup files, as they will need to download different collections of material. For example this: *default release=cvs tag=RELENG_7_0 src-all combination will pull down the system sources for the security updates to RELEASE. Read in the Handbook about the tags and collections. I keep a separate sup file for keeping the ports tree updated and the difference is here: *default release=cvs tag=. ports-all Please notice that if you use the tag=. with src-all you will pull down HEAD, which is the bleeding edge of development and not what a beginner should be using. But when used with the ports collection you will get an up to date ports tree. now this makes sense, i wasn't too sure from reading the handbook so i thought i'd play safe and use the example ports-supfiles, but then used the example stable-supfile instead of whichever is for release. lives and learns. anyhow i think that only my nvidia driver instructions mentioned it relies on what i think are system sources (kernel related - if i'm not mistaken) - but i haven't touched that yet. Generally speaking before building something like the nvidia drivers using the ports system the best first step is to refresh the ports tree. With all dependencies tracked and updated you'll likely have more success. Notice, for instance, that the nvidia driver depends on having what we call the linuxulator installed. It'll do this for you but you may have to enter a line in your /boot/loader.conf to ensure the linux.ko kernel module gets loaded every time at boot. You will usually see some more instructions at the end if you need to do anything special. Also, be aware that the nvidia driver is only currently working with i386, _not_ amd64. Even if only using packages you should _still_ update the ports tree, as the package system relies on it for dependency tracking as well. I hate to bother any further but have one thing to clarify about building attempts - when building anything, if that's ok. I only have a basic understanding of C so far, and can't really tell how critical warnings are - such as undefined this and that, defined but not used...etc, when building a port. should i stop those and see how i should fix them or let them proceed as long as they're not errors? I can live with my current system for now, but have a few things i need to update eventually. When you use ports and compile stuff, you may see all manners of warnings, errors, and sundry garbage spewing forth from the compiler. Most of this, most of the time, is benign and not something to get overly concerned about as it is fairly normal. The exception is if the build errors out and completely quits, and there is an error sequence that will indicate whereabouts it bombed. Sometimes ports do get broken and need fixing, but most ports have a person who maintains them. If/when many people see the same error someone usually notifies the port maintainer and he/she then looks into fixing it. But generally speaking, if the build completes and runs without segfaulting just ignore what you may have seen scrolling by while building. Most of the time it's just noise. :-) -Mike with the nvidia-driver, i've tried both ways 1- using the ports tree off the install discs without updating (which has a ver 100...,, something and seems to work ok with xorg from packages) ,,, 2 - after updating the ports tree (which has ver 173..something) and seems to work better if i update xorg from ports. The thing is, this usually goes like dominos and ends up in updating one thing after another; and with at least 350 packages to update at once, i easily loose track and just hope for the best. I've had different results from that with the system as a whole, generally with good improvements on one end, and some broken stuff on the other, but only seen a segmentation fault once, now that you mention it. (it was with firefox but only that one time - never happened before) So overall i wanted to rule out those warnings with updates in general, know how critical they are and whether i needed to go through configuration files first and what not. thanks for all the info - everything starts to make sense as you go. mcassar ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 18:32:53 +0200, mcassar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: damn, thanks - I had mistaken stable to be what is release; i had come across the difference at some point but didn't realise when i tried cvsup (which i also mistook to be more recent than csup). First of all, a hearty welcome :) You've only been reading about FreeBSD for a month, but you already managed to install fairly big packages, like KDE and XFCE, learn about csup, supfiles, the ports, and a lot of other stuff. Congratulations on the progress, and we hope you will enjoy FreeBSD as much as many of us also do. I only tried csup on ports once and wasn't too sure i should since the handbook or somewhere mentioned the ports tree should be empty the first time you run it; and got the impression you should only use either or (csup vs portsnap). One of the important details about keeping up to date with FreeBSD is that you usually have *two* options for almost everything: - Update from the source - Update from 'binaries' (1) The source side of things The full source to the base system and the full source of the Ports, including change history (like who made a change, when, and why), is available online. This is an important part of the whole FreeBSD culture, and it works in several nice ways: (a) You can go back when a change is made but you don't like it, (b) you can see who made a particular change and why, and this works a lot of time both as a tracking tool and, almost as importantly, (d) as educational. So if you want to learn more about how a fairly large body of source code is maintained for several different architectures by a large, distributed team of enthusiastic volunteers, the full history of FreeBSD is available for browsing. The source for FreeBSD is available through a variety of means. Tools like CVSup, csup, and Subversion can be used to pull copies of the source with or without its full history. The same tools (CVSup and csup) can be used to pull and periodically re-synchronize copies of the source for: the base system, the Ports collection, our documentation, or our web site. If you plan to build several versions of the source tree, from one of the various branches of development, it is nice to be able to switch from one version to the other without heavy utilization of the network. In this case, CVSup is a great way of pulling full mirrors of the CVS repositories. But this needs a fair amount of disk space (slightly more than 2 GB the last time I checked for a full repository mirror of the src/, doc/, www/ and ports/ repositories). (2) The 'binary' side of things On the other hand, if you don't really want to dig that far into the source part of things, and you just want to get some work done, you can use a second collection of update tools like: * freebsd-update For updating the binaries of the base system. * portsnap For downloading snapshots of the /usr/ports tree * portupgrade with the -PP option For updating the installed third-party packages, using only the prebuilt binary packages of the FreeBSD port-builders team. The choice between checking out the source from CVS and using the prebuilt code whenever possible is something only *you* are qualified to make for yourself. Disk space constraints, limits to the time you can put into keeping the system update, and the level of bleeding edge you want to keep up with may influence your final decision and push towards one or the other option. The nice thing about it all is that you *do* have a choice :-) I hate to bother any further but have one thing to clarify about building attempts - when building anything, if that's ok. I only have a basic understanding of C so far, and can't really tell how critical warnings are - such as undefined this and that, defined but not used...etc, when building a port. should i stop those and see how i should fix them or let them proceed as long as they're not errors? I can live with my current system for now, but have a few things i need to update eventually. The short answer to Should I bother? is Sure, please do. Before you start 'hacking' at ports, however, we should make it clear that a lot of the existing problems are already fixed and it takes a certain amount of dedication, time and effort to fix the remaining bits.. The longer answer, which is slightly more interesting IMHO, is... The number of broken, completely bogus or just 'unportable' assumptions people make when they write software is mind-numbing. It is often utterly incomprehensible and absolutely stunning how many or how serious assumptions some third-party tools make. All this leads to a lot of the warnings you mentioned above. The FreeBSD port maintainers commonly make an effort to fix these problems as part of the porting effort. This is why many of the ports have local, FreeBSD-specific patches. If you look in a typical port, there is a files/ subdirectory which
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
Michael Powell writes: I can only speak to cvsup or csup (which I use) but I'd like to point out a very common mistake wrt either. It is a good idea to have two different sup files, as they will need to download different collections of material. For example this: *default release=cvs tag=RELENG_7_0 src-all combination will pull down the system sources for the security updates to RELEASE. Read in the Handbook about the tags and collections. I keep a separate sup file for keeping the ports tree updated and the difference is here: *default release=cvs tag=. ports-all I have a file for src-, one for ports-, and one for doc-. Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
On Saturday 02 August 2008 21:43:43 Robert Huff wrote: Michael Powell writes: I can only speak to cvsup or csup (which I use) but I'd like to point out a very common mistake wrt either. It is a good idea to have two different sup files, as they will need to download different collections of material. For example this: *default release=cvs tag=RELENG_7_0 src-all combination will pull down the system sources for the security updates to RELEASE. Read in the Handbook about the tags and collections. I keep a separate sup file for keeping the ports tree updated and the difference is here: *default release=cvs tag=. ports-all I have a file for src-, one for ports-, and one for doc-. Robert Huff so most of you _do_ use or prefer csup/cvsup more than portsnap, right? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: gemeral questions (noobish)
thanks alot for that. i mean, apart from your general overview of freebsd (system, project and community), which gives me an idea how things are done, what's happeniing and where things are, you really put me at ease with trying to figure out these warnings, or at least what to expect and where to start - i wasn't sure if it was up to my setup or what. although i don't know if you misunderstood my saying *fix them* as in i should setup my system properly, or as in get to bug-tracing and the like; which is still out of my expertise and jurisdiction. or was that wishfull thinking? it is something i want to figure out eventually, but at the moment i'm still so fascinated by everything (system, community) that i'm trying to catch up on as much as i can. anyway, it's getting late here now and i honestly forgot what else i was going to say, except thanks for the welcome. appreciiated since i honestly still can't beleive i was missing out on this fbsd *stuff* ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
