Another ports / packages question

[Frank Shute]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 12:08:23AM +0100, Chris Rodgers wrote:
>
> Hi
> 
> I have a FreeBSD box at home which acts as a dial-up server and runs a few
> little things for me. It's running 5.1-RELEASE and I don't see any pressing
> reason to upgrade at the moment. However, I am not sure what to do about the
> ports. I CVSup'ed them recently, but this now means that my ports tree has
> got ahead of the binary packages available on the FreeBSD servers. Since the
> machine is old and rather slow, this is making adding any new software a
> painful process! :-)

I'm not to sure how long it takes for changes in ports to be reflected
in packages.

> 
> What should I do? Do I put my ports tree back to the one in 5.1-RELEASE and
> just use the packages from the CD back then, is there some alternative
> download site for packages for older OS versions, or is it easy to build the
> packages on a faster machine and then just install them on the slow one (how
> closely must the configurations of these two machines match each other)?
> 
> Many thanks in advance for your help / suggestions

AFAIK there is no repository maintained by the FreeBSD project for old
versions of ports/packages.

I don't know how old and slow your machine is or what softs it runs
but I maintain two 300MHz Celerons on a dial-up.

My approach: Try not to run bloatware :)

For me, this rules out Gnome, KDE, and OO. The bits of bloatware I
have to run: Firefox and X. Also stick the bloatware in your cvsup
refuse.

If your machine's just a server, you shouldn't have to run any
bloatware and building from ports would be the way to go.

Some figures for the record (on 300MHz Celeron):

Build world & kernel: 3 hrs
Build Firefox: Start at bedtime, built for breakfast.

Disclaimer: My net access is free in the evenings and at weekends.

-- 

 Frank 

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