Using Free BSD Portsnap

Portsnap is a system for securely distributing the FreeBSD ports tree.

On FreeBSD 6.0 and more recent versions, Portsnap is contained in the FreeBSD base system. On older versions of FreeBSD, it can be installed using the ports-mgmt/portsnap port.

  • Portsnap Configuration

Portsnap's operation is controlled by the /etc/portsnap.conf configuration file. For most users, the default configuration file will suffice.

  • Running Portsnap for the First Time

The first time portsnap(8) is run, it will need to download a compressed snapshot of the entire ports tree into /var/db/portsnap/ (or /usr/local/portsnap/ if Portsnap was installed from the Ports Collection). This is approximately a 41 MB download. 

    portsnap fetch

    portsnap extract

    Note: In the default installation /usr/ports is not created.
  • Updating the Ports Tree

After an initial compressed snapshot of the ports tree has been downloaded and extracted into /usr/ports/ 

   portsnap fetch update
  • Some older versions of portsnap do not support this syntax; if it fails, try instead the following: 
   portsnap fetch

   portsnap update