local mirrors of ports and packages?

[DA Forsyth]

On 30 Jul 2008 , freebsd-questions-request at freebsd.org entreated 
about
 "freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 226, Issue 6":

> Yes, I am currently rsyncing:
> ftp://ftp.is.co.za/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7-stable/
> 
> Is this the correct data? And where in FreeBSD do I change the mirror
> list or installation source?

type 'man make.conf'
look for 'master site backup'.
but, you don't need to download all the packages, only the ones you 
need to install, surely?   When I test installed 7.0R I burnt a set 
of CD's that contain most common packages for the basic install.  
After that I fetched ports as needed (after updating the ports tree 
of course).

However, you will find a number of ports that only exist in their own 
hosts, and never appear on the usual servers, so having a mirror 
won't help.

If you are installing several boxes with the same packages, then 
download to one and transfer the package files to the  others 
locally.  You can do this via flash stick, NFS, ftp, scp, samba 
share, and probably many other ways.  You can also create packages 
from ports and then transfer your newly created package as needed (I 
do this for my print servers which have a minimal install and do not 
have a full ports tree)


--
       DA Fo rsyth            Network Supervisor
Principal Technical Officer -- Institute for Water Research
http://www.ru.ac.za/institutes/iwr/