Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 09:55:57 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1050418557.9a7e13@mired.org> To: charles@wranglers.com.au Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Replacing Win95 with FreeBSD for low cost home PCs Message-ID: <16021.34301.38162.413020@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <1049939391.47109.31.camel@feynman> References: <1049855817.93999.84.camel@feynman> <16020.15129.740634.315264@guru.mired.org> <1049939391.47109.31.camel@feynman>
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In <1049939391.47109.31.camel@feynman>, Charles Young <charles@wranglers.com.au> typed: > On Thu, 2003-04-10 at 01:24, Mike Meyer wrote: > > In <1049855817.93999.84.camel@feynman>, Charles Young <charles@wranglers.com.au> typed: > > > What I've done is to set up a meta port of a workstation suite and then > > > install this on each machine from a central dist site via NFS. I found > > > there were fewer issues this way, though the build process can take a > > > mighty long time. > > > > Might I suggest - to both of you - that these would be easier if you > > built packages out of these, and nfs-mounted the directory with the > > packages in them? That way you'd only have to build things once, and > > could still install everything by installing the package of the > > meta-port. > <snip> > I like the way you think Mike, however I have chosen to do this via > ports rather than packages because of three reasons: > 1. For reasons that I can only define as religious, I like to build > things for a specific target architecture - which means optimising for > the specific CPU and devices in the system. As I'm installing into > offices that have generally grown organically, there is usually no > standardised hardware. This means building a new kernel for each > machine. While this does not necessarily mean anything once I get to > install ports - philosophically I prefer to build an entire system in > the same manner - I've a feeling (completely without measured basis I > might point out) that OpenOffice.org, for example, behaves better if > built from source on the target machine. That one I can't argue with. I don't have that many different types of machines, and building for the lowest common denominator doesn't hurt the faster machines that much. Of course, I'm running a commercial office suite, so it's probably built for 386 and up. One of these days I'll convert to openoffice. > 2. I find updating from sources much cleaner that using packages. New > Xft? no problem, just run a portupgrade -fr Xft. Portupgrade will install from packages. Just do portupgrade -Pfr Xft. > 3. One of the companies has two offices separated by a VPN over an ADSL > connection. Bandwidth through this is restricted. I have a push tool > (imaginatively entitled 'pushtool') that triggers a cvsup, portsdb -uU > and portupgrade with the supplied arguments on the remote machine. I use > this to do sitewide updates at selected moments using a central CVS > repository. Doing this via source means that often only patches are > transferred which I don't believe is ever the case for packages. > I must admit, however that this is a special case, as usually I just > mount /usr/ports/distfiles on the workstations via NFS to a file server, > so generally there would be no difference. > > OK having typed all this I find I can't really justify my stance > scientifically except for point 3 and then only in certain > circumstances. It just feels better to me to do stuff with source. I like doing stuff with source as well. I install things with LOCALBASE=/usr/opt so that things that I can keep things installed from ports separate from things locally written or installed from the net at large. However, I still build packages on the fast machine to install on the slower ones. I get the options I want and the same warm fuzzy feeling from having installed from source because *I built the package from source*. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
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