Quick tip please

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Hi, I'm familiarized with FreeBSD's installation process. I'm not an UNIX administrator or anything like that, I'm just a curious kid and like to try alternative software if I have some time, with that said (to "implicitly" explain my inherent noobness), I need advice in what will be the best road for me to follow.

I know there are three FreeBSD branches, RELEASE, STABLE and CURRENT. I've dealt with RELEASE 7.2 in an old box my family has, the thing is we have slow connection and since I prefer to have all the software completely up to date, I had to spend wicked sick times in front of the computer just waiting for the system to build the packages from source via ports and update them (Since some of the programs weren't completely up to date in binary form yet).

Well, that HDD fried, and now I have to do it all over again, but this time I don't want to go with RELEASE, cause then I'll have to update all over again, I want to go with the STABLE branch from the start, and with the latest packages available, but here's the catch, this time the pc won't be connected to the internet, at least for a while, so I want to have the most recent version of the STABLE branch, and the CD2 with the latest packages for me to install on top of that STABLE installation I want to do (primarily need python and java since I want to learn programming it using FreeBSD as my development system). The problem is, I'm getting really lost inside FreeBSD's ftp, and I can't identify the STABLE latest iso, and its CD2 with the packages for that STABLE iso. I would really appreciate if someone guides me here in the right direction please. Thanks in advance.
 
Hi ale, thanks for the quick response. Ok, I see this is the one for me:

7.2-STABLE-200906-i386-disc1.iso 451MB

But where's the disc that has standard packages like xfce, fluxbox, lxde, firefox, some image viewers and those kinds of useful apps?. Because the

7.2-STABLE-200906-i386-disc2.iso
7.2-STABLE-200906-i386-disc3.iso

Isos weight only 364 KB. And I need to install several packages from CD media because that box is not connected to internet. What are those 2 and 3 discs that weight so little for?.
 
Fronclynne. As I said, that box in which I'm installing FreeBSD to, won't be connected to internet, so ports won't work for me. Now, before asking again for that package CD, let me ask if it actually exists. Does a 2nd CD with packages and their dependencies exist?, you know the one that sysinstall asks when you pick packages that are not included in CD1.

NOTE: I'm almost 100% sure it does exist. I read it somewhere... I'm quite sure.
 
Maybe I'm not noticing, but I just can't see it. All I see is this for i386.

7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-disc1.iso 443374 KB
7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-disc2.iso 364 KB
7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-disc3.iso 364 KB
7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-docs.iso 300342 KB
7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-dvd1.iso 932700 KB
7.1-STABLE-200902-i386-livefs.iso 226796 KB

Which one is it?, disc2 and disc3 are too small.
 
Oops, you are right. Small iso here too.

But again, STABLE is a development branch and the snapshots are intended to give the opportunity to test the OS, not the 3rd party applications.
I guess that it will be a pain to build all the packages for every architecture for every snapshot.
So you can get disc1 then download the packages for example from here
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-stable/All
and install them using pkg_add.
 
The download part should be easy, just cd to the directory and type mget * with a ftp client.
I don't use packages but I think that pkg_add should handle the dependencies.
 
I suggest to use 7.2-RELEASE for java development.

The packages are not only older versions, but also do not include some options you can choose when building the ports. To get all the latest and greatest on FreeBSD, you will need a latest and greatest CPU at the moment (to build from the ports).

As mentioned earlier in this thread, using 7.2-RELEASE doesn't keep you from installing up to date ports. Also the 7-stable packages will normally work correctly. Though, there is no easy way to download them with all the dependencies. You would have to write a (maybe java: I could give you hints) program to do so.

Building individual ports without a connection is also possible. It is complicated because you will first need to fetch the port tar ball (http://www.freebsd.org/ports/) and extract it on the FreeBSD machine. Then change into the it's directory and run:

Code: 
make fetch-list

You will end up with a list of URLs you have to download and put into /usr/ports/distfiles on your FreeBSD machine. Then you can build the port with

Code: 
make install clean

One of the more prominent reasons to go to 7-STABLE today, is because of zfs version 13. I don't know of any other feature you would miss on 7.2-RELEASE, currently.
 
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