Just like RPM Package Manager, FreeBSD Ports collection is where users and administrators to install application that has been ported for FreeBSD. At the time of writing, there are more than 19,000 ports available. Ports can be searched via official FreeBSD ports page or use one of the following commands on your FreeBSD machine :

# make search name=[port's name]
example: make search name=vim

or

# make search key=[keywords]
example: make search key="text editor"

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Ports Tree and keeping it up-to-date, as well as install application from ports.

Install Ports Tree

If you did not install ports during FreeBSD Installation, it can be installed using sysinstall command:

• sysinstall
• Configure
• Distributions
• Ports (space to select) then click OK
• and follow the rest of the instructions

Keep Ports Tree Up-To-Date

In software development world, everything is ever-changing. Software always get updated because of new features or bug fixes. Your Ports Tree might no longer be up-to-date. In order to ensure your ports tree has the latest collection, it needs to be updated. There are 2 common ways to update Port Trees:

CVSup/csup Method

The example ports-supfile can be found in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile, copy that file to /root/ so that you can modify to fit your setup.

Open /root/ports-supfile and modify CHANGE_THIS.FreeBSD.org to a CVSup near you. After save the file, run the following command:

# csup -L 2 /root/ports-supfile

If you want to use different CVSup server without modifying the ports-supfile, run the following command instead:

# csup -L 2 -h cvsup.FreeBSD.org /root/ports-supfile

Portsnap Method

It is an alternative application for distributing ports collection. It’s more secured and faster since each snapshot is digitally signed and compressed. If Portsnap is not installed on your system, it can be found in /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portsnap.

There are 3 basic and common portsnap command:

1. portsnap fetch: to download latest snapshot
2. portsnap extract: only need if you are running Portsnap for the first time
3. portsnap update: to update your existing Ports Tree from your recent fetched snapshot

To update your Ports Tree on demand, you can run the following command to fetch and update:

# portsnap fetch update

To update your Ports Tree regularly, you need to add the following line in your root’s crontab entries:

0 3 * * * /usr/sbin/portsnap cron

Install New Application from Ports

There are many ways to install new application, such as compile from source, packages system, or sysinstall. I will show you how to do it for the first two.

Compile From Source

Compiling from source can be as easy as make install. First you need to locate where the application is located inside /usr/ports. If you are not sure, you can use search (see Synopsis).

Example on how to install vim:

cd /usr/ports/editors/vim/ && make install

This method will download the source code and install it from source.

To deinstall  vim:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/vim/ && make deinstall

To reinstall vim:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/vim/ && make reinstall

Please keep in mind, every time you install an application using this method, it will take up some time and space. It will create all the compiled objects in working directory inside its folder. This eventually can fill up your partition. All the downloaded source code also will retain in /usr/ports/distfiles. To clean those files, you need to run this command:

# cd /usr/ports/editors/vim/ && make clean distclean

clean is to clean its working files and distclean is to clean its distribution file(s). Isn’t that pretty straight forward?

Using Packages System

Example on how to install vim:

# pkg_add -r vim

To deinstall vim, you need to know its version number:

# pkg_delete vim-7.2.14

To find out what version vim is installed on your system:

# pkg_info | grep vim
vim-7.2.14          Vi "workalike", with many additional features

Upgrading Installed Application Using Portupgrade

To determine if there is any newer version of installed application in your system, run the following command:

# pkg_version -vIL=
vim-7.2.14                          <   needs updating (index has vim-7.2.14_2)
fusefs-kmod-0.3.9.p1_2              <   needs updating (index has 0.3.9.p1.20080208_3)

This command is to compare all the installed application with your local ports tree. If it has different version (newer or older), it will be listed. Therefore, it’s recommended to keep your ports tree updated.

If you do not have Portupgrade installed in your system, it can be found at /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade.

To upgrade all outdated application, run the following command:

# portupgrade -a

To upgrade a specific application, run the following command:

# portupgrade vim

Further Reading

• Using the Ports Collectio
• Using CVSup
• Using Portsnap
• Using the Packages System

To provide step-by-step guide on how to install a FreeBSD operating system. At the time of writing, FreeBSD7 is the latest version. However this guide is written to be as general as possible that could be applied for any version of FreeBSD.

In this guide, FreeBSD7 will be installed on Guest Computer of VMware Server 2.

What is FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is an advanced open source Operating System that can run under different hardware architectures, such as, but not limited to: x86, UltraSPARC, and ARM. For more information about FreeBSD, please read FreeBSD page at Wikipedia.

Why FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is a robust and a reliable operating system. Compare to other free operating system, it’s regarded to have the longest uptime. This is extremely important for high availability server. FreeBSD has its Ports collection (Like RPM for RedHat, and DEB for Debian), which provides an easy and consistent way of installing software package. It has over 19,000 ports available in the collection.

Requirements

• Internet Connection (preferably high speed connection)
• Computer (or Virtual Server such as VMware Server)
• Blank CD (only required if installing on a physical computer)
• Basic computer and linux/unix knowledge

Getting FreeBSD

Go to Getting FreeBSD and choose the right FreeBSD version and platform for you; in this case, FreeBSD7 & i386 for the platform. Click on the [ISO] link on ISO column. It’s recommended to just download the bootonly iso in order to save time and bandwidth. Any additional update and application will be downloaded as necessary. In this case, download 7.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso.

Once the ISO is downloaded to your computer, burn the ISO to a blank CD only if you are going to install it on a physical computer, otherwise go to the next section.

Installing FreeBSD

Put the CD inside your CD-ROM (or mount the ISO to your guest OS if you are using virtualization) and make sure your computer is bootable to your CD-ROM before your hard disk. Normally this can be done by press “Esc” button after the boot screen or via bios setting; see your computer manual to change the setting. Once it’s ready, turn on the computer and let it boot to CD-ROM until you see Country Selection screen and make the selection:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Country Selection

After you click ok, it will go to sysinstall Main Menu and choose Standard option:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: sysinstall Main Menu

Press ok on the next message screen to bring you to FDISK Partition Editor. On this screen you can press A for Auto (Use Entire Disk) or customize to fit your configuration:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: FDISK Partition Editor

Press Q once completed and it will bring to Install Boot Manager screen(s). Normally you only need to install boot manager on first disk (da0 or ad0), choose BootMgr for your first disk and choose None for the rest of your disks (if there is any):

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Install Boot Manager

Press ok on the next message screen to bring you to FreeBSD Disklabel Editor. On this screen you can also press A for Auto Defaults option or customize to fit your configuration:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: FreeBSD Disklabel Editor

Press Q once completed and it will bring to Choose Distributions screen. You can choose the pre-defined options such as User, Developer, X-User, Minimal, etc. Or you can customize the package by choosing Custom. For this example, I chose Custom with the following distributions selected: base (required), kernels (required), man, src (all), and ports:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Distributions

Press X for Exit to back to Choose Distributions screen:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Choose Distributions

Choose OK to go to Choose Installation Media. If you use bootonly disk, you can pick either FTP, FTP Passive, or HTTP. If you use diskfull CDs or DVD, you choose CD/DVD:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Choose Installation Media

In this example, we will be using FTP as the media, click OK and on the next screen it will go to Network interface information required and pick the right NIC. It will also prompt couple questions:

1. Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface? [no]
2. Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface? [yes] and fill the proper value for each fields:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Network Configuration

Once you click OK, it will give you User Confirmation Requested to warn that any existing data will be overwritten. Click Yes to start the installation. This may take awhile, depending on selected distributions, installation media (CD-ROM or internet), as well as your internet connection (if you chose FTP, FTP Passive, or HTTP).

After the installation completed, it will show the congratulation message:

HowTo: Install FreeBSD: Installation Completed Message

After you click it will prompt the following questions and answer accordingly to your needs or the one suggested below:

1. Do you want this machine to function as a network gateway? [no]
2. Do you want to configure inetd and the network services that it provides? [no]
3. Would you like to enable SSH login? [yes]
4. Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine? [no]
5. Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS server? [no]
6. Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS client? [no]
7. Would you like to customize your system console settings? [no]
8. Would you like to set this machine’s time zone now? [yes]
   1. Is this machine’s CMOS clock set to UTC? If it is set to local time, or you don’t know, please choose NO here! [no]
   2. Select region [America -- North and South]
   3. Select a country or region [United States]
   4. Select a zone which observes the same time as your locality [Pacific Time]
   5. Does the abbreviation `XXX’ looks reasonable?
9. Would you like to enable Linux binary compatibility? [yes]
   This is totally optional. It will allow to compile and run some Linux binaries that is not in the Port collections.
10. Does this system have a PS/2, serial, or bus mouse? [no]
11. The FreeBSD package collection is  a collection of thousands of ready-to-run applications, from text editors to games to WEB servers and more. Would you like to browse the collection now? [no]
    We would like to choose no, we can install all the necessary application later on. The reason we do not want to install it right now, most likely the collection ports are not up-to-date. So you might end up with outdated application.
12. Would you like to add any initial user accounts to the system? [...] [yes]
    1. Select User to add new user
    2. Select Group to add new group
    3. Once you are done, select Exit
13. Now you must set the system manager’s password. This is the password you’ll use to log in as “root”.
    enter your root password twice
14. Visit the general configuration menu for a chance to set any last options?
15. Once you are done, it will bring you back to sysinstall Main Menu and you can safely select Exit Install.
16. It will prompt you to eject any disc in order to prevent the system to boot from CD again.
17. The system rebooted, and wallah, now you have your FreeBSD installed on your system.

Further Reading

• FreeBSD Handbook: It is probably the most well written handbook out there, very resourceful.

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