Hi Peter, > I have a local FTP server that contains many packages. > When doing an install I want my pc to first check this server > before going onto the net.
Why would you want to do that? This might be a bad idea in the first place. Suppose you got some package from a public mirror, and after that, a security hole was found in the package, so it was updated on the mirror. In that case, you might end up installing the vulnerable local copy, not even noticing there's an update. > I have set up the following in a shell script on the pc being installed: > > LAN_FTP=192.168.3.11 > OS_V0=$(uname -r) > PKG_PATH=ftp://$LAN_FTP/OpenBSD/$OS_V0/packages/: > ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/$OS_V0/packages/i386/ > export PKG_PATH > pkg_add -v postfix According to my understanding, pkg_add will always check all paths given in PKG_PATH. In order to choose the right package, it will inspect the package itself, not its position in PKG_PATH. What i'm currently doing is the following: On my reference machine, i use the settings PKG_PATH=ftp://openbsd.ftp.fu-berlin.de/snapshots/packages/i386/: /srv/ftp/OpenBSD/current/packages/i386/all/ PKG_CACHE=/srv/ftp/OpenBSD/current/packages/i386/all/ On that machine, i do pkg_add -ui whenever some update is required. Whenever i need to use some new software, i first install and test it on that machine. Thus, i always have up-to-date versions of all locally required packages on that box. In case i need to compile a package from ports or from ports/mystuff, i put the home-made package there, too. Should an official package be released later, i will very probably notice at once. On all other machines, i point PKG_PATH to the (local) ftp server on that reference machine *only*, thus neither creating external network load nor retrieving untested packages when installing or updating production servers. Yours, Ingo
