OpenBSD Updates

Crashed_Again · 03-31-2005, 09:44 AM

I was reading the docs at openbsd.org and I was wondering about the install process. It seems that packages are the recommended way to install applications. The ftp example given is:

sudo pkg_add ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3....reen-4.0.2.tgz

So, do you have to download every package one at a time to get the stable release? Is their an equivlant to 'emerge sync' or 'apt-get update'?

Perhaps I should read on but I figured somebody could answer this quickly.

How do you update/install packages in openbsd?

Crashed_Again · 04-04-2005, 03:01 PM

Okay 65 people viewed this thread and not one response. I guess the bsd community is not as vast or not has helpfull as the linux community. I'll just stick with Linux then.

frob23 · 04-04-2005, 04:35 PM

Or maybe... just maybe... this answer is so very basic that we all figured you had solved the problem by the time we got around to answering it. You see... it is actually far easier to read the page that talks about packages than it is for us to type it all out for you.

http://www.openbsd.org/ports.html

Quote:

Adding a package is as easy as pkg_add pkgname.tgz. If you are grabbing packages from a single source (a package repository), set PKG_PATH to that repository URL, in order to grab dependencies.

For instance, to install the Gimp package for the 3.6 release on an i386 machine off the ftp site (including dependencies), do:

Code:

# setenv PKG_PATH ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.6/packages/i386/
# pkg_add ${PKG_PATH}gimp-1.2.5.tgz

I mean, come on... it's not something that only a rocket scientist could figure out. You'll also note -- by reading the page -- that an update requires you to delete the packages first. It admits this is inconvienient (with dependancies and all) but it is the current method.

EDIT (to add):

Quote:

As of OpenBSD 2.8, to update a package you must:

* Remove the old package using pkg_delete(1)
* Add the new package using pkg_add(1)

This is slightly inconvenient, as packages may trigger dependencies, and you may have to remove a large subset of packages for an update.

frob23 · 04-04-2005, 04:55 PM

http://openbechede.sourceforge.net/en/

And less than five minutes with google turned up this project. Which automates the whole process of upgrading and provides "apt-like" functionality.

Quote:

What is openbechede?
Openbechede is a package (installer/removal/updater) tool for OpenBSD systems. It aims to manage your packages in a faster and a more simple way.

With openbechede you can fetch the lists of packages according to your OBSD version, search for packages, install them (and automatically the dependencies they require), remove packages (asking if you want to remove also the packages that depend on them) and I think the best of the features: you can automatically upgrade your system's packages. A simple cron job could run openbechede, and you would be sure that you have your packages up to date. Also, it reflects its activity in a log file (/var/log/openbechede.log by default).