Questions about FreeBSD sysinstall

Okay, I'm trying to load PHP4 through the sysinstall package collection. It bombed out and said to look at the "debug screen" for more information on why it messed up. At first I thought, oh, I just forgot to stop the Apache service. But I did that and tried to reinstall the package, and no luck. First question: Is there a debug screen in sysinstall?

So I couldn't find the damn debug screen, so I thought I'd just download the source for Apache and PHP and recompile
them instead. I went to sysintall to uninstall Apache, and
apparently there are two dependencies on it! Dammit!
Is there a way to find out the dependencies? Like is there
an install log maybe somewhere?

Okay, so apparently, ALT+F2 will get you to the debug screen. Lemme check that out and see if it does any good.

EDIT: Damn, that only works if you're on the console and have access to a virtual session! I am remote through SSH. :-(

hmm, I don't know how to remove stuff from a sysinstall but for a clean method to manage packages do minimal install and use ports get portupgrade which enables easy management of all your packages. If you need the source from a port to compile yourself just make extract in that dir and your src will be in the work dir. It is also fine just to use the php ports straight make install it is at 4.1.2 now. If this is useless to you sorry.

edit: maybe if you compile from port it will overwrite
or just make install might throw an error but maybe not since it checks pkgdb to see

Hey Bob thanks for the info.

Sometimes I make things harder on myself than is
necessary!!!

I did one of the things you suggested, I just ran
make, and then make install, and it was VERY PAINLESS.
I LOVED the little dialog box that popped up when running
make, it even gave a couple of nice selection boxes for integrating the module with postgres (or other popular
Apache/PHP modules). That was a very pleasant suprise
and makes me very happy!

Regarding CVSup, I have a question. Now, the purpose is to
update your ports to the latest version, right? But say I am on
FreeBSD 4.4. Say the latest version of Webmin on the last release of FreeBSD 4.4 CD was 0.50. (just making these version numbers up). Now if the most current version of webmin on the FreeBSD 4.5 CD is now up to 0.82, will CVSup update my FreeBSD 4.4 Webmin port to that version?

Or is there a ceiling with the version of ports, that being
you can only get the latest ports with the most current
release of FreeBSD?

I'd like to have available the latest ports that someone running FreeBSD 4.5 has.

>> CVSup update my FreeBSD 4.4 Webmin port to that version?

Yes, when you CVSup your ports and it will update whole ports. Be sure to check in /usr/share/examples/cvsup for the example of CVSup.. Also, check in FreeBSD's handbook at www.freebsd.org ..

Thanks mezz.

Just a minor tip on top of the portupgrade advice offered above for package installation:

to check what packages you have currently installed, try:
, which will give you a nice list of everything installed so far. From what I can ascertain this info is kept in /var/db/pkg/, one directory per package/port installed. With this in mind whenever I want to remove a package from my system, I do:

and bingo the package is removed (as long as there are no deps). With regard to deps, pkg_delete usually tells you what's required by the package you're trying to remove if applicable, in which case you can either manually remove all deps sequentially or perhaps try the portupgrade tool (which I've not made much use of myself, but hear is good).

I prefer using the pkg_* tools to /stand/sysinstall, mainly because of the 'debug' info you can view in console mode.

Another really sweet tool is pkg_version - this checks the versions of each package/port currently installed against the latest version as reported in /usr/ports tree. With an additional command-line switch (-c?), it'll also write the commands required to upgrade each port into a file specified after the switch, which is very useful in determining what you need to do to get the package/port up to the latest version with the least fuss.

Anyway, good luck.
Jez

Here is a good read on ports(upgrade)if you have not read before

originally dropped by freebsd

doh:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/200...ry_Daemons.html