*BSD News Article 74633


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From: Quinton Dolan <q@kirra.its.bond.edu.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Installing FreeBSD + Packages from a FAT Partition
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 12:07:13 +1000
Organization: Bond University
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Howdy,

For the past couple of years I have been using Linux up until last week
when I decided that I would try out FreeBSD 2.1.5. I downloaded all the
stuff I thought I would need and got everything going beautifully except
for a problem with the packages.

I have the FreeBSD distribution on a FAT filesystem (on a Fujitsu DynaMO
MO-Drive) and it works like a dream to install off but the problem I
have is with the naming convention used by the packages (and ports I
think... dunno didn't get them yet).

All the FreeBSD stuff is nicely named and ordered so that I can put in
on a FAT partition no problem. The packages on the other hand have long
names and I can copy them to a FAT partition (which truncates their name
to /.*(^.).???/ style names) such that when the installer reads the list
of packages from the packages/INDEX file it can find them. Although it
doesn't seem to successfully install all the desired packages, some
fail.

The other problem with doing this is that you can't use pkg_add or
pkg_manage to play around with then later on because it expects a file
to have a .tgz extension or else it assumes it to be a .tar file.

Can someone tell me how I should be naming these files so that they can
be stored on a FAT partition and still retain their usefullness. I
really don't want to have to format a seperate disk to UFS and do it
that way. How does Walnut Creek do it on their CD-ROM's?

I checked all the FAQ, INSTALL, Handbook documentation and I couldn't
find it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Seeya...Q