Instructions for FreeBSD

[Koopmann, Jan-Peter]

On Monday, June 05, 2006 4:12 PM Julian Field wrote:

>> You could simply make your installer script FreeBSD aware and
>> everything would be fine. Jan would be the man to talk to, as he
>> maintains the FreeBSD port he already knows what needs to be where
>> for a FreeBSD system.
> 
> Okay, I will contact Jan-Peter, and find out what should be where.

:-) Let's start with this: Please do not remove files from your download site without telling me:

=> MailScanner-install-4.53.8-1.tar.gz doesn't seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/.
=> Attempting to fetch from http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/files/4/tar/.
fetch: http://www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/files/4/tar/MailScanner-install-4.53.8-1.tar.gz: Moved Temporarily
=> Attempting to fetch from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/.
fetch: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/MailScanner-install-4.53.8-1.tar.gz: File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
=> Couldn't fetch it - please try to retrieve this
=> port manually into /usr/ports/distfiles/ and try again.
*** Error code 1


This is the reason the port currently is not working for anybody. If you still want to have that flexibility I would have to cache the files on our server. I have no problem with that but would like to have your permission first.


The port system is totally different from rpm or Linux based installs. It contains so much magic. Starting from automatically handling the install points, rc.d scripts (including variable replacement), maintaining a database, automatically installing and maintaining the relationships to other packages, patching the system to be FreeBSD conform...

My port changes quite a lot of little things in MailScanner to make it FreeBSD conform. I strongly doubt that a few tweaks in your install script would suffice. For starters: I strongly advise against using SpamAssassin/ClamAV etc. from CPAN or your install script in FreeBSD. There are excellent ports for all those dependencies (DCC, razor etc.). A new clamav version only requires a

portupgrade clamav

and that's it. If you are installing things to different locations (which you should in order to not interfere with the ports system) you will have to take care of the updates yourself. I don't even know where to continue. I know my time is quite limited which is why it takes me several days to update the port once Julian has released a new version but I am afraid that's the way it is and is not going to chance soon. On the other hand if there are very critical patches that should be in the system the port sometimes was a lot faster than Julian. If there is a very serious change that people need in the port please contact me immediatly and I will try to get it done ASAP.

As for the beta: Since I am on the beta list as well I hope I will find time to produce a few beta ports myself. If that is not sufficient (which I understand) then those people would have to use the tarball. Again: I strongly advise only to use the MailScanner component without installing ClamAV etc. from the tarball. If you do not know your way around FreeBSD and those components 100% the chance of messing up your system is quite high. :-)




Kind regards,
  JP