This section describes how to find, retrieve and install a precompiled binary package that someone else already prepared for your type of machine. Precompiled packages are stored on ftp.NetBSD.org and its mirrors in the directory /pub/NetBSD/packages for anonymous FTP access. Please pick the right subdirectory there as indicated by uname -p. In that directory, there is a subdirectory for each category plus a subdirectory All which includes the actual binaries in .tgz files. The category subdirectories use symbolic links to those files (this is the same directory layout as in /usr/pkgsrc/packages). This same directory layout applies for CDROM distributions, only that the directory may be rooted somewhere else, probably somewhere below /cdrom. Please consult your CDROMs documentation for the exact location. If you have the files on a CDROM or downloaded them to your hard disk, youcan install them with the following command (be sure tosu to root first): # pkg_add /path/to/package.tgz If you have FTP access and you don't want to download the packages via FTP prior to installation, you can do this automatically by giving pkg_add an FTP URL: # pkg_add ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/<OSvers>/<arch>/All/package.tgz If there is any doubt, the uname utility can be used to determine the <OSvers>, and <arch> by running uname -rp. Also note that any prerequisite packages needed to run the package in question will be installed, too, assuming they are present where you install from. After you've installed packages, be sure to have /usr/pkg/bin in your PATH so you can actually start the just installed program. Please pay very careful attention to the warnings expressed in the &man.pkg.add.1; manual page about the inherent dangers of installing binary packages which you did not create yourself, and the security holes that can be introduced onto your system by indiscriminate adding of such files. This assumes that the package is already in pkgsrc. If it is not, see . To build packages from source on a NetBSD system the comp and the text distribution sets must be installed. If you want to build X11 related packages the xbase and xcomp distribution sets are required, too. The distfile (i.e. the unmodified source) must exist on your system for the packages system to be able to build it. If it does not exist, pkgsrc will use &man.ftp.1; to fetch it automatically. You can overwrite some of the major distribution sites to fit to sites that are close to your own. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf to find some examples - in particular, look for the MASTER_SORT, MASTER_SORT_REGEX and INET_COUNTRY definitions. This may save some of your bandwidth and time. You can change these settings either in your shell's environment, or, if you want to keep the settings, by editing the /etc/mk.conf file, and adding the definitions there. If you don't have a permanent Internet connection and you want to know which files to download, make fetch-list will tell you what you'll need. Put these distfiles into /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles. Assuming that the distfile has been fetched (see previous section), become root and change into the relevant directory and running make. For example, type &cprompt; cd misc/figlet &cprompt; make at the shell prompt to build the various components of the package, and &rprompt; make install to install the various components into the correct places on your system. Installing the package on your system requires you to be root. However, pkgsrc has a just-in-time-su feature, which allows you to only become root for the actual installation step Taking the figlet utility as an example, we can install it on our system by building as shown in . The program is installed under the default root of the packages tree - /usr/pkg. Should this not conform to your tastes, set the LOCALBASE variable in your environment, and it will use that value as the root of your packages tree. So, to use /usr/local, set LOCALBASE=/usr/local in your environment. Please note that you should use a directory which is dedicated to packages and not shared with other programs (ie, do not try and use LOCALBASE=/usr). Also, you should not try to add any of your own files or directories (such as src/, obj/, or pkgsrc/) below the LOCALBASE tree. This is to prevent possible conflicts between programs and other files installed by the package system and whatever else may have been installed there. Some packages look in /etc/mk.conf to alter some configuration options at build time. Have a look at pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf to get an overview of what will be set there by default. Environment variables such as LOCALBASE can be set in /etc/mk.conf to save having to remember to set them each time you want to use pkgsrc. Occasionally, people want to look under the covers to see what is going on when a package is building or being installed. This may be for debugging purposes, or out of simple curiosity. A number of utility values have been added to help with this. If you invoke the &man.make.1; command with PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2, then a huge amount of information will be displayed. For example, make patch PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2 will show all the commands that are invoked, up to and including the patch stage. If you want to know the value of a certain make(1) definition, then the VARNAME definition should be used, in conjunction with the show-var target. e.g. to show the expansion of the &man.make.1; variable DISTFILES: &cprompt; make show-var VARNAME=LOCALBASE /usr/pkg &cprompt; If you want to install a binary package that you've either created yourself (see next section), that you put into pkgsrc/packages manually or that is located on a remote FTP server, you can use the "bin-install" target. This target will install a binary package - if available - via &man.pkg.add.1;, else do a make package. The list of remote FTP sites searched is kept in the variable BINPKG_SITES, which defaults to ftp.NetBSD.org. Any flags that should be added to &man.pkg.add.1; can be put into BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS. See pkgsrc/mk/defaults/mk.conf for more details. A final word of warning: If you setup a system that has a non-standard setting for LOCALBASE, be sure to set that before any packages are installed, as you can not use several directories for the same purpose. Doing so will result in pkgsrc not being able to properly detect your installed packages, and fail miserably. Note also that precompiled binary packages are usually built with the default LOCALBASE of /usr/pkg, and that you should not install any if you use a non-standard LOCALBASE. By default, pkgsrc will use GCC to build packages. This may be overridden by setting the following variables in /etc/mk.conf: PKGSRC_COMPILER: This is a list of values specifying the chain of compilers to invoke when building packages. Valid values are: distcc: distributed C/C++ (chainable) ccache: compiler cache (chainable) gcc: GNU C/C++ Compiler mipspro: Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPSpro (n32/n64) mipspro: Silicon Graphics, Inc. MIPSpro (o32) sunpro: Microsystems, Inc. WorkShip/Forte/Sun ONE Studio The default is gcc. You can use ccache and/or distcc with an appropriate PKGSRC_COMPILER setting, e.g. ccache gcc. This variable should always be terminated with a value for a real compiler. GCC_REQD: This specifies the minimum version of GCC to use when building packages. If the system GCC doesn't satisfy this requirement, then pkgsrc will build and install one of the GCC packages to use instead.