From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 1 00:21:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F9C016A4CE for ; Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:21:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ren.sasknow.com (ren.sasknow.com [207.195.92.131]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDD1B43D2F for ; Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:21:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Received: from hsdbsk69-11-17-34.sasknet.sk.ca (hsdbsk69-11-17-34.sasknet.sk.ca [69.11.17.34]) by ren.sasknow.com (8.12.9p2/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i610L401099403; Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:21:05 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from ryan@sasknow.com) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:21:52 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson To: Lonnie Santella In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040630181233.Q615@localhost.my.domain> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: hogsett@csl.sri.com cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ports Base X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:21:22 -0000 Lonnie Santella wrote to hogsett@csl.sri.com: > That's a good point, but I don't make a practice of running NFS, and > often the servers are at different locations - not connected via any > network. > > So would I be correct in assuming that I would copy the entire > contents beginning at the /usr/ports level and all subdirectories? Sure. That will gain you the benefits of an up-to-date ports tree. It's important that you do this before any ports are installed on the system, though, or you'll likely have consistency and dependency issues. Once you start installing ports, you have the pkgdb to deal with. Personally, I would just use once fast/well-connected machine to keep everything up to date and build packages for all of the ports you need. Then, just copy those packages and their recursive dependencies (via CD, or ftp/sftp/scp). It's a *lot* less to transfer and maintain. I use something like this to rapidly deploy new FreeBSD servers. Within about 40 minutes from an empty RAID array, I can have a fully-configured environment, the latest RELENG_4_9 (or 4_10 now), up-to-date ports, with our own base ports already installed. We do use NFS and a cvsup server to make life easy, but, in cases where I've done this remotely, I only had to modify a few processes to make it work over SSH. Due to network and system speeds, it took longer than 40 minutes (2-3 hours the last time I tried. The client bought me steak and a pint of beer at a local restaurant while we waited), but it was still just one "make all" once I got the first root prompt after the FTP install. - Ryan -- Ryan Thompson SaskNow Technologies - http://www.sasknow.com 901-1st Avenue North - Saskatoon, SK - S7K 1Y4 Tel: 306-664-3600 Fax: 306-244-7037 Saskatoon Toll-Free: 877-727-5669 (877-SASKNOW) North America