Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:16:45 +0200 From: Manolis Kiagias <sonic2000gr@gmail.com> To: twh359@earthlink.net Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newbie: offline package use / XFCE. Message-ID: <49765B5D.5090909@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <op.un2t3an4zupx9r@dialup-4.249.15.110.dial1.washington2.level3.net> References: <op.un2t3an4zupx9r@dialup-4.249.15.110.dial1.washington2.level3.net>
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Thomas W. Holloway wrote: > Greetings from newbie land. > > I have what I hope is a simple question about using packages offline, > with particular reference to XFCE if that matters. I am not so much > asking "how do I do this?" as I am "Do I understand this correctly?" > > I have read the appropriate sections of the Handbook, Lehey's > _Complete FreeBSD_ (both paragraphs :) ), and Lucas' _Absolute FreeBSD > (2nd ed.). I have googled and done some searching of this list's > archives, and couldn't tease the answer out of them. As you will see, > it would be a LOT of work to "just try it", so I don't feel too bad > about asking before diving in. > > I would like to install XFCE on a FreeBSD 7.1 box that is and will > remain (for now) offline. No network connection at all. If I have read > correctly, this means downloading the appropriate package(s) and using > pkg_add. So far, so good (I haven't done it, but it seems clear enough). > > The package for XFCE4, as listed here > > http://www.freebsd.org/ports/xfce.html > > is a "meta-port" (I believe I understand the idea), which seems to > have about one hundred (100) dependencies. Of course, some of those > will have dependencies of their own, and so on. My question is this: > > In order to "download/ftp the package" for XFCE4, I would have to > obtain all hundred (or so) of the listed files _and_ any dependencies > they may have so as to point pkg_add at them locally. Is this correct? In short, yes. And this will be quite difficult to get right. *Unless* the machine you actually use to get the packages is also running FreeBSD. You could then pkg_add -r xfce4 on it and then recreate all the required packages and transfer them to the target machine. To recreate the packages: # cd /usr/ports # mkdir packages # cd packages # pkg_create -Rb xfce-x.y.z (hint: use pkg_info -Ix xfce to get the exact name of the xfce metaport to use with pkg_create) The same applies also if you decide to build xfce from Ports. You could still create packages in the same way. Simply copy the packages to a CD or USB drive, and pkg_add on the target machine (note you will not use '-r' on it as all the packages are local) > If not correct, what have I missed (a pointer to what I've missed > should be sufficient). > > I've also looked at it from the XFCE side, where there is a nice, > detailed doc by Benedikt Meurer, here > > > http://www.os-works.com/documentation/xfce-installers/4.2.1/xfce-installer/ > > This document refers to an older version of XFCE and may not be applicable to the current one. I've never used this, I definitely prefer to build my own packages from the official port. > This strongly implies that I can bypass the pkg_add procedure > entirely. Might be worth trying, but I'd still like to know if I've > understood what the package listing above is saying. > > Editorial comment and/or general advice on XFCE is not unwelcome. It's > just secondary to the question. > XFCE is nice, I've been using it on almost all my FreeBSD desktops. It is a no frills desktop. The default look is somewhat blunt, but it is easy to customize to taste. I also usually install ristretto (picture viewer) thunar-volman-plugin (for mounting USB drives etc) and a few other xfce utilities. It compiles rather quickly on my humble Pentium IV. As a side note, I have a machine specifically for building packages and it just happens that I finished a complete build run today (for FreeBSD 7.1 32bit). This includes XFCE, Xorg, Gnome + power tools + fifth toe, KDE4 (4.1 actually) and few other things. More than 1.5G of packages. I could possibly upload just the XFCE + dependencies packages somewhere so you can download them and use them. Contact me directly if you wish to go down that route.
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