FBSD 14.1 - KDE5 Install Hiccup, PKG Fetch = 1 KB?

[FreeWay]

New to FBSD, moving on from MicroCoughed. Despite a big learning curve, all looks good and promising so far.
Have read good chunks of the Handbook (and of course many forum posts and videos). That will obviously be an ongoing process. Urgh.
(See questions at bottom: 3 re/ installing KDE5 plasma, 2 misc. re/ scrolling and BE renaming)

Looking to accomplish the following
- Set up of a secure and stable system
- Opting for KDE DE because: customization and a bit of bling (naturally)
- Will use a Windows VM to ease the transition

Install Process to date
- Installed 14.1 with ZFS and stripe 0 (no debugging options, yes to lib32 and ports) (on 1TB drive w/ 8 GB memory)
- ran both freebsd-update and pkg install & update
- "uname -a" shows:
→ FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE releng/14.1-n23769-10e31f0946d8 GENERIC amd64
→ (so 14.1-RELEASE-p2)
- somewhere along the way, went to edit a file ("doas" I think), entered a command, and ran into a black screen overlaid atop the CLI black screen
- eventually (after much confused button pressing to no avail, realized what was going on and discovered something called “vi”. That was fun.
- installed Xorg
- installed "nvidia-driver-340" and added “kld_list+=nvidia” to the "rc.conf" file
- created a new BE, activated and booted into that
- which is where KDE would have will now be installed
- and then was going to install dbus and sddm after that, enable them in "rc.conf"
- and then reboot into a cool new system to continue with other configurations & installs

The “Fetching Hiccup”
When entering “doas pkg fetch plasma5-plasma”, the results read:
⇒ All repositories are up to date.
⇒ The following packages will be fetched:
⇒ New packages to be FETCHED:
• plasma5-plasma: 5.27.11 (1 KiB: 100.00% of the 1 KiB to download)
⇒ Number of packages to be fetched: 1
⇒ 1 KiB to be downloaded

When entering “doas pkg fetch plasma5”, the results read:
⇒ All repositories are up to date.
⇒ The following packages will be fetched:
⇒ pkg: No packages matcing “plasma5” have been found in the repositories.

When entering “doas pkg fetch kde5”, the results read:
⇒ All repositories are up to date.
⇒ The following packages will be fetched:
⇒ New packages to be FETCHED:
• plasma5-plasma: 5.27.11.23.08.5_2 (1 KiB: 100.00% of the 1 KiB to download)
⇒ Number of packages to be fetched: 1
⇒ 1 KiB to be downloaded

Mmmm, k. Something wrong with that picture.
A whole DE compressed into one file of 1 KB? That's some mighty impressive compression and efficiency! hah

Questions
1 - Is “plasma5-plasma” the correct pkg to use if I'm just looking for the base DE and not all the applications in the full KDE5?

2 - Does “KDE plasma5” or just “plasma5” refer to the same thing?

3 - If “all repositories are up to date”, why is fetch not finding all the files for Plasma5 to download and install? Any tips / suggestions at this point?

4 - Scrolling (Unrelated) - can't remember where I read it, but I think there's an option to scroll back up and see text / lines that have passed when entering some commands that spit out lines or pages of text that I can't use the Up arrow or Page-Up to view again. Is this possible?

5 - Rename BE - Is it possible to rename a BE (boot environment) that you created, or do you have to create another one with the new name you want and then delete the first one?


Looking forward to any helpful replies that will get this up and going.

 

[SirDice]

x11/plasma5-plasma is a so-called "meta port". It doesn't contain anything of itself, it merely depends on a whole bunch of other ports/packages. x11/kde5 is also a "meta port". That's why they are so small, it only contains some meta data.

If you just want the KDE desktop, x11/plasma5-plasma is what you want. The x11/kde5 includes a whole bunch of extra applications.

4 - Scrolling (Unrelated) - can't remember where I read it, but I think there's an option to scroll back up and see text / lines that have passed when entering some commands that spit out lines or pages of text that I can't use the Up arrow or Page-Up to view again. Is this possible?

On the console, press the scroll-lock key, then you can scroll back using cursor keys or page up/down. Hit scroll-lock again to end it.

5 - Rename BE - Is it possible to rename a BE (boot environment) that you created, or do you have to create another one with the new name you want and then delete the first one?

     rename origBeName newBeName
               Rename the given origBeName to the given newBeName.  The boot
               environment will not be unmounted in order for this rename to
               occur.

bectl(8).

 

[FreeWay]

Thank you SirD. That did the trick.

Heads up for any other “greenlings” opting for the plasma5 meta-port, there are 2 choices on the Freshports page: a port (download/build/compile) and a package (pre-built) download.

If you're on a slow internet connection and go with the port, prepare to hunker down for a long time and continuously monitor the process (as there will be many options to select from).

Also, if your internet connection drops out for any reason, fret not. Just re-enter the install command and it will pick up where it left off. (Phew!)

I can't say how long it will actually take though because after an error popped up at about the 17+ hr mark, the whole process borked, and it wasn't able to be resumed. And so don't even know how far it was from actually completing.

After a few heated and colourful words were directed at an oblivious, unblinking, uncaring, unphased screen, I shut it off and went with the other package option the next day.

And that only took about 30 minutes!

But then that messed up too at login, probably because it was now a combination of ports and packages. So started from scratch, reinstalled the OS, Xorg, etc. and then Plasma pkg and it all went smoothly.

 

[SirDice]

So started from scratch, reinstalled the OS,

You don't need to reinstall the OS. That's one of FreeBSD's strong points, ports/packages are completely separated from the OS. A pkg delete -a will remove all packages, then you can just start over.

     -a, --all  Deletes all installed packages except for pkg(8) from the
                system and cleans the database of information related to
                removed packages.

pkg-delete(8)

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… ports/packages are completely separated from the OS.

With pkgbase: not exactly.

A pkg delete -a will remove all packages,

root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ # pkg delete -a -n | grep FreeBSD- | wc -l
     522
root@mowa219-gjp4-zbook-freebsd:~ #

– hundreds of base packages.

I guess, something more targeted is possible with the --regex option of pkg-delete(8).