OpenBSD Journal

Anandtech OpenBSD Ports 'FAQ'

Contributed by Dengue on from the anandtech.com dept.

grey writes :
"OpenBSD Ports FAQ was posted to the hardware tech-site today it would appear. Seems a bit incongruous, given that the site seems mostly garnered towards performance-enthusiast users. Though to their benefit they do have the occasional half-decent server-hardware review, unlike tomshardware, et al. Link is here: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=124

The 'sudo make' bit might jump out at those following the irssi debate on misc@ recently who argue that only make install should be done as root. But otherwise it's an OK (if seemingly totally out of place) introduction to ports for joe-newbie. I get the feeling that most anandtech readers might be better off with a "What is OpenBSD?" faq though. ;-) "

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By somejackass () on

    But it'd be far far better if they included a link to http://www.openbsd.org/ports.html. The openbsd page, however, could stand to mention the setenv FLAVOR bit, and make search bits, seems like a lot of people don't know about that.

    Comments

    1. By Klaus () on

      That's right. The ports FAQ would need some improvement. I had last time problems to install some ports on an X-less machine. Unfortunatelly I could find nowhere a hint regarding the FLAVOUR setting. So I had to use some other trick which took me a few hours.
      Thanks to Anandtech.

      Comments

      1. By DieNadel () on

        Well, I don't know for how long it's there, but if you take a look at the ports(7) man page, you can see the FLAVORS section, that says:

        "Lots of ports can be built without X Windows requirement and accordingly have a no_x11 flavor."

        http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ports&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&arch=i386&format=html

        Comments

        1. By Gioffreus () on

          true. a person could also just read the Makefiles to figure out what he/she needs to figure out. now personally, that is how i do it and have never had a problem...

          the ports(7) man page is a good reference, but i still think you get a much better understanding of the whole ports system and how things are done by just reading the relevant files in $PORTSDIR/infrastructure/mk/ ...

          granted, that's just my opinion and what works for me. BTW, it's not like it takes a lot of time to do this either...
          --
          cheers to all =)

  2. By Pedantic () on

    Look, I'm not normally one to critique someone elses writing, but didn't anyone run a grammar check on this posting? I read it three times before I was able to grok it.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      quit babbling and submit the fixes to the author.

  3. By Gioffreus () on

    i'm just curious. why does author suggest to do a `sudo make fetch' . maybe i'm just paranoid, but isn't it dangerous for a root-owned proc to be making client connections to the network?

    i'm not saying it is..? i'm just asking *if* it *is* dangerous. anyway, i have always just done `make fetch' from my normal user account.


    in the same vein and for the same reason, i *never* do cvs updates as root or via su/sudo either. am i wrong in my thinking that root should never do cvs updates? am i just a monkey?

    Comments

    1. By grey () on

      As I said when posting this...

      "The 'sudo make' bit might jump out at those following the irssi debate on misc@ recently who argue that only make install should be done as root."

      Definitely performing actions as root unnecessarily can potentially lead to compromising situations, you're definitely _not_ being paranoid.

      Refer to the recent irssi thread on misc@ for more details of why building a port as root might not be that wise.

      One example of a more sane method may be found in this post; but reading the whole thread can give some other interesting alternatives:

      http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archive/openbsd-misc/200205/msg01669.html

      Comments

      1. By Gioffreus () on

        thanks for the suggestion.

        > Refer to the recent irssi thread on misc@ for more details

        will do!
        someday soon i gotta subscribe to misc@ again. always something interesting to read...

  4. By Marc Espie () espie@openbsd.org on mailto:espie@openbsd.org

    Okay, I'll bite.

    Not so good FAQ.

    Compiling ports as root ? Blech !!! Very, very bad advice.

    FLAVOR advice is not good as well... There's a reason
    we consistently say
    `use env FLAVOR=no_x11 make'

    It's because env is a command that works, and is shell-independent. So you don't have to give distinct advice to sh and csh users.

    The `make search' stuff is VERY outdated as well.
    See `SELECTING A SET OF PORTS'
    in the ports(7) manpage to see what I'm talking about...

    Comments

    1. By Gioffreus () on

      i don't even use `env'... i just do `FLAVOR=no_x11 make' . okay, but now i see. seems csh does not like that.

      how's that? i learned something new today... ;)

      Comments

      1. By Gioffreus () on

        okay, call me blind... sorry, i did not intend to reiterate something that had been said already. looks like i did. sorry =(
        ignore me

  5. By Anonymous Coward () on

    I am an AT editor. I post under the name Kristopher Kubicki. I consider myself fairly proficient in Open and NetBSD. (I tend to stay away from Free as of late). When I saw this FAQ post I gave it the once over -- I honestly have no idea what they were doing when they made this FAQ -- it really doesn't belong on the site, and it was not done as well as it should have been.

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