Media Packages Vs. Ports

[Adam Vande More]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 11:41 AM, <vrwmiller at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am performing PXE boots and automated installs of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE
> with a custom sysinstall.cfg file which identifies packages that are to be
> installed in addition to the distributions. We have need to install
> compat6x-amd64 and I'd like to have this done during install. Unfortunately,
> it does not appear that this package exists in the FreeBSD media from which
> the install occurs. However, it is available through the ports collection.
>

You'll probably want to do something like this:

http://bsdbased.com/2010/03/23/freebsd-binary-package-repository-howto

FWIW, that's not the end all, be all to setting up your own package
repository just a reasonably simple method.


>
> What is the relationship between the packages directory on the media and
> the ports collection?


http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/packages-using.html

Packages associated with a RELEASE also ultimately come from the ports
tree.  However, those RELEASE packages come from a ports tree that was put
into slush, then frozen.  This means those packages had more testing and
tweaking.

 Is it possible to take a port, make a package of it and put it in the
> packages directory of my own media?
>

Sure it's easy.  When build a port you can issue a make package command, or
you can use pkg_create to create packages from installed ported.  A common
approach to this is build all your updates in a jail, make packages of them,
then delete package from the host and install the newly built ones from the
jail.  Very small, if any downtime.  You can use the jail to create pkg's
for a custom repository too.

http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-questions@freebsd.org/msg228757.html

-- 
Adam Vande More