DragonFly installation experience / suggestions

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 01:43:33PM +0200, Michael Neumann wrote:
> * In FreeBSD there is a /etc/rc.d/ipw script, that load the firmware
>   into the driver (ipwcontrol -i ipw0 -f firmwarefile). IIRC,
>   FreeBSD 7.0 will even include the firmware file and add a sysctl like
>   "kern.license.ipw", which you have to set to agree the Intel license.
>   It's very annoying to install a system, if this firmware is not
>   shipped with the base system, as you need to get connected with a
>   cable to fetch this firmware!

I'm not sure if anyone wants to fight with Intel long enough to get the
rights for redistribution. I certainly don't want to.

> * Would it be possible to preset the PKG_PATH to for example
>   pkgsrc-box.org? This would make life much easier for beginners.

I object such a change. Really, take the 5min to figure out which mirror
is nearest / fastest for you and take that.

> * After having added a lot of binary packages, I tried to install
>   another one from source. This required libxml-someversion, which
>   seemed to be already installed (by a binary package). Despite, it
>   stopped and told me that I either should remove the package
>   (pkg_delete) or that I should issue bmake replace. Oh, I did
>   "bmake replace", and this first removed a few packages (my window
>   manager and stuff like that!).

*What* did it tell you? The biggest reason is typically that the binary
package is outdated and a newer reason is required for whatever reason.
I also question that it told you to run "make replace", which does
something quite different.

> * pkgsrc: If you install www/firefox from source, this will install
>   firefox 2.x. If you do "pkg_add firefox", this will install
>   firefox-15.

It shouldn't. You might have hit a temporary bug in pkg_install though.

> * What would be really cool, if pkgsrc could mix binary and packages
>   from source. So if I do "pkg_add thispackage", it tries to add all
>   packages it can find as binary, the others it will build from source.
>   The same if you do "bmake", given an option, it would first try to add
>   binaries for all the dependencies.

DEPENDS_TARGET=bin-install

Set BINPKG_SITES similiar to PKG_PATH first.

> * Installing ipw-firmware, a message says to modify ACCEPTABLE_LICENSES
>   accordingly in /etc/mk.conf. I do it, but the same message occurs,
>   until I realize that there is /usr/pkg/etc/mk.conf that I have to
>   modify.

Fixed.

> * Uh, and if DragonFly would get pkgjam.org that would be great! I don't
>   know what the general opinion of pkgsrc developers about
>   pkgjam.org is...

It is a nice idea and a nice testbed for those. I'm not sure it can
really work. I'm not sure either how much of the discussion ended up in
the video from pkgsrccon :-)

Joerg