Sysinstall errors and debug screen

[Matthew Seaman]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2004 at 08:52:08PM -0700, Stefan Warnke wrote:

> when installing FreeBSD with Sysinstall it sometimes happens that an error
> message comes up and the module couldn't get installed. Changing the medium
> (CD or different ftp server) sometimes helps. It's not consistence, on one
> machine I could install Samba 3 and MySQL 4, on another one I'm always
> getting an error after a successful download. Samba 4 and MySql 3 can
> install.

Hmmm... I'd advise you to just skip adding any third party software
packages during the initial installation.  Once you've got FreeBSD up
and running, you can install packages from the command line by:

    # pkg_add -r pkgname

which will download the appropriate package from one of the FTP mirror
sites, together with any other packages it depends on, and install
them.

Note that both the Samba 3 and MySQL 4 packages you want are slightly
trickier to deal with as there are packages for several different
versions of that software available.  You'll also need to install both
mysql-client and mysql-server ports. eg:

    # pkg_add -r mysql41-server
    # pkg_add -r mysql41-client

You can see what packages are available by looking at eg.

    ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4.10-release/Latest/

(Warning: that downloads a list of about 11,000 packages).

Change the 'packages-4.10-release' bit to whatever is appropriate for
the FreeBSD version you're running.

It's also the case that the samba3 package isn't available on any of
the -RELEASE CDs or package collections, as it was only renamed to
that /after/ the last release (4.10-RELEASE).  (Before then it was
called 'samba-devel'). However, see below for how to use ports, which
is probably the best way around that problem.
 
> Can anyone tell me where to find the "debug screen" with the error messages?
> What can I do to be able to install from the ports. I'm close to download
> the packages from Samba.org and MySql.com instead of wasting time with
> sysinstall.

Pressing Alt-F2 together will get you to a screen with debug output,
but only during the initial system installation: it doesn't work if
you run sysinstall(8) as a regular program on an already installed
system.

As for downloading the sources from samba.org or mysql.com and
compiling yourself: there's a very neat and simple way of doing that
with the FreeBSD ports system.  eg:

    # cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql41-server
    # make install

See the handbook for details:

    http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.html

and here's a series on OnLamp articles which explain many tricks of
the trade:

    http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/07/FreeBSD_Basics.html
    http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/28/FreeBSD_Basics.html
    http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/09/18/FreeBSD_Basics.html

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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