Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 11:38:14 EDT From: "John Daniels" <jmd526@hotmail.com> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Broken ports (Wordperfect?) Message-ID: <20000502153814.12871.qmail@hotmail.com>
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Hi: Can someone describe what the policy is for providing helpful information along with a port? Yes, the mailing lists are available for searching but this can take time and is done only after a problem occurs and time-consuming attempts to rectify the problem by the user. I had some trouble installing the Wordperfect port last weekend but I was able to get it running after several mailing list searches and a few failed tries that wasted several hours. Recently I have seen some emails on freebsd-ports complaining about a number of "broken ports." My understanding is that the FreeBSD Ports system strives for complete ease of use (the legendary: cd <portdirectory>; make install). Thus, speaking from a practical point of view, if a port requires user interaction which is not fully described in a convenient and proper place, then that port *is* "broken." Although the mailing list is available as a problem solving resource, it would be very helpful to have common problems and helpful hints in an easily accessible place. I searched the mailing lists and found that others have had problems with the Wordperfect port. It was disappointing that although problems had been recognized, the information was not readily available to me *before* I began the install. To illustrate the point, please review the following summary of the problems with the Wordperfect point as I understand them: 1) The description of the Wordperfect port includes a "sources" link which points to an ftp site on the freebsd server but I did not find the GUILG00.GZ file on freebsd.org (now freesoftware.com) website. I suppose the file may have been there at one time but may have been removed due to the requirement that the user accept the license agreement before download. 2) Netscape does not download the binary image file correctly, resulting in checksum/MD5 errors. I tried right clicking on links to open/download the link in binary format, as recommended by a mailing list post, but Netscape (4.72 linux version) never gave me the binary download option. 3) The GUILG00.GZ file is actually a tar file, not a tar.gz file and the port expects this. 4) The linuxberg mirror sites download a file named "WordPerfect" (not GUILG00.GZ) which is confusing and this file actually *is* gizziped so it is not suitable for use with the port (see #3), unless you figure this out and ungunzip the file. 5) To get a graphical install you must install using an xterm (ie. you must have xwindows running) 6) I installed linux emulation when I installed FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE, but some in the mailing lists have noted that a user may need to type the command "linux" to enable their linux emulation. Finally I had to use ftp to retrieve the GUILG00.GZ file. This was remarkably easy, given the difficulties that I had had. In the /usr/ports/distfiles directory I issued the command: $ ftp ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/simtelnet/cnet/win95/business/GUILG/GUILG00.GZ I got the ftp address from the Cnet download site (it appears when the cursor is moved over the "ftp.cdrom.com" text). If I had been told to do this in the first place my download/install would have been 25 minutes instead of 3+ hours. John ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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