Ports intelligent?

[Jan Grant]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Steve Bertrand wrote:

> Traditionally, when installing for a new Internet server, I have
> installed everything from sources in a particular method.
>
> This is a nightmare to upgrade, and would like to know if installing
> from ports would be sensible.
>
> MySQL, Apache 1.x, PHP, Vpopmail, Courier-imap, Qmail etc.
>
> In which order should I install? I need to have mysql driven vpopmail,
> and apache and php must talk to mysql also. IMAP support must be built
> into PHP too.
>
> How do I put this mess together sensibly?

Install portupgrade and use that to manage your ports. It can be a chore
to get things right to begin with, but is definitely worth persevering
with. Check the makefiles of the ports you're interested in for tunable
build switches.  Read pkgtools.conf carefully. Take copies of all your
config files; port upgrades don't usually overwrite these, but if they
do you'll be able to recover (and report the matter to the port
maintainer).

-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 http://ioctl.org/jan/