Package Building Procedures

The FreeBSD Ports Management Team

$FreeBSD: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/portbuild/article.xml 40544 2013-01-05 15:22:29Z linimon $

$FreeBSD: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/portbuild/article.xml 40544 2013-01-05 15:22:29Z linimon $

FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.

Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

SPARC, SPARC64, SPARCengine, and UltraSPARC are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc in the United States and other countries. SPARC International, Inc owns all of the SPARC trademarks and under licensing agreements allows the proper use of these trademarks by its members.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed by the “™” or the “®” symbol.


Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Build Client Management
3 Jail Build Environment Setup
4 Customizing Your Build
5 Starting the Build
6 Anatomy of a Build
7 Build Maintenance
8 Monitoring the Build
9 Dealing With Build Errors
10 Release Builds
11 Uploading Packages
12 Experimental Patches Builds
13 How to configure a new package building node
14 How to configure a new FreeBSD branch
15 How to delete an unsupported FreeBSD branch
16 How to rebase on a supported FreeBSD branch
17 How to configure a new architecture
18 How to configure a new head node (pointyhat instance)
19 Procedures for dealing with disk failures

1 Introduction

In order to provide pre-compiled binaries of third-party applications for FreeBSD, the Ports Collection is regularly built on one of the “Package Building Clusters.” Currently, the main cluster in use is at http://pointyhat.FreeBSD.org.

This article documents the internal workings of the cluster.

Note: Many of the details in this article will be of interest only to those on the Ports Management team.


1.1 The codebase

Most of the package building magic occurs under the /var/portbuild directory. Unless otherwise specified, all paths will be relative to this location. ${arch} will be used to specify one of the package architectures (e.g., amd64, arm, i386™, ia64, powerpc, SPARC64®), and ${branch} will be used to specify the build branch (e.g., 7, 7-exp, 8, 8-exp, 9, 9-exp, 10, 10-exp). The set of branches that portmgr currently supports is the same as those that the FreeBSD security team supports.

Note: Packages are no longer built for branches 4, 5, or 6, nor for the alpha architecture.

The scripts that control all of this live in /var/portbuild/scripts/. These are the checked-out copies from the Subversion repository at base/projects/portbuild/scripts/ .

Typically, incremental builds are done that use previous packages as dependencies; this takes less time, and puts less load on the mirrors. Full builds are usually only done:

  • right after release time, for the -STABLE branches

  • periodically to test changes to -CURRENT

  • for experimental ("exp-") builds

Packages from experimental builds are not uploaded.


1.2 Notes on the codebase

Until mid-2010, the scripts were completely specific to pointyhat.FreeBSD.org as the head (dispatch) node. During the summer of 2010, a significant rewrite was done in order to allow for other hosts to be head nodes. Among the changes were:

  • removal of the hard-coding of the string pointyhat

  • factoring out all configuration constants (which were previously scattered throughout the code) into configuration files (see below)

  • appending the hostname to the directories specified by buildid (this will allow directories to be unambigious when copied between machines.)

  • making the scripts more robust in terms of setting up directories and symlinks

  • where necessary, changing certain script invocations to make all the above easier

This document was originally written before these changes were made. Where things such as script invocations have changed, they were denoted as new codebase: as opposed to old codebase:.

Note: Up until November 2012, pointyhat had still been running the old codebase. That installation has now been permanently offlined. Therefore, all the instructions having to do with the old codebase have been removed.

Note: Also during this process, the codebase was migrated to the Subversion repository. For reference, the previous version may still be found in CVS.


2 Build Client Management

The i386 clients co-located with pointyhat netboot from it (connected nodes); all other clients (disconnected nodes) are either self-hosted or netboot from some other pxe host. In all cases they set themselves up at boot-time to prepare to build packages.

The cluster master rsyncs the interesting data (ports and src trees, bindist tarballs, scripts, etc.) to disconnected nodes during the node-setup phase. Then, the disconnected portbuild directory is nullfs-mounted for jail builds.

The ports-${arch} user can ssh(1) to the client nodes to monitor them. Use sudo and check the portbuild.hostname.conf for the user and access details.

The scripts/allgohans script can be used to run a command on all of the ${arch} clients.


3 Jail Build Environment Setup

Package builds are performed in a jail populated by the portbuild script using the ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/bindist.tar file.

The makeworld command builds a world from the ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/src/ tree and installs it into ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/bindist.tar. The tree will be updated first unless -novcs is specified. It should be run as root:

# /var/portbuild/scripts/makeworld ${arch} ${branch} ${buildid} [-novcs]

The bindist.tar tarball is created from the previously installed world by the mkbindist script. It should be also be run as root:

# /var/portbuild/scripts/mkbindist ${arch} ${branch} ${buildid}

The per-machine tarballs are located in ${arch}/clients.

The bindist.tar file is extracted onto each client at client boot time, and at the start of each pass of the dopackages script.

For both commands above, if ${buildid} is latest, it may be omitted.


4 Customizing Your Build

You can customize your build by providing local versions of make.conf and/or src.conf, named ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/make.conf.server and ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/src.conf.server, respectively. These will be used in lieu of the default-named files on the server side.

Similarly, if you wish to also affect the client-side make.conf, you may use ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/make.conf.client.

Note: Due to the fact that individual clients may each have their own per-host make.conf, the contents of ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/make.conf.client will be appended to that make.conf, not supplant it, as is done for ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/make.conf.server.

Note: There is no similar functionality for ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/src.conf.client (what effect would it have?).

Example 1. Sample make.conf.target to test new default ruby version

(For this case, the contents are identical for both server and client.)

RUBY_DEFAULT_VER= 1.9

Example 2. Sample make.conf.target for clang builds

(For this case, the contents are also identical for both server and client.)

.if !defined(CC) || ${CC} == "cc"
CC=clang
.endif
.if !defined(CXX) || ${CXX} == "c++"
CXX=clang++
.endif
.if !defined(CPP) || ${CPP} == "cpp"
CPP=clang-cpp
.endif
# Do not die on warnings
NO_WERROR=
WERROR=

Example 3. Sample make.conf.server for pkgng

WITH_PKGNG=yes
PKG_BIN=/usr/local/sbin/pkg

Example 4. Sample make.conf.client for pkgng

WITH_PKGNG=yes

Example 5. Sample src.conf.server to test new sort codebase

WITH_BSD_SORT=yes

5 Starting the Build

Separate builds for various combinations of architecture and branch are supported. All data private to a build (ports tree, src tree, packages, distfiles, log files, bindist, Makefile, etc) are located under the ${arch}/${branch}/builds/${buildid}/ directory. The most recently created build can be alternatively referenced using buildid latest, and the one before using previous.

New builds are cloned from the latest, which is fast since it uses ZFS.


5.1 dopackages scripts

The scripts/dopackages.wrapper script is used to perform the builds.

# dopackages.wrapper ${arch} ${branch} ${buildid} [-options]

Most often, you will be using latest for the value of buildid.

[-options] may be zero or more of the following:

  • -keep - Do not delete this build in the future, when it would be normally deleted as part of the latest - previous cycle. Do not forget to clean it up manually when you no longer need it.

  • -nofinish - Do not perform post-processing once the build is complete. Useful if you expect that the build will need to be restarted once it finishes. If you use this option, do not forget to cleanup the clients when you do not need the build any more.

  • -finish - Perform post-processing only.

  • -nocleanup - By default, when the -finish stage of the build is complete, the build data will be deleted from the clients. This option will prevent that.

  • -restart - Restart an interrupted (or non-finished) build from the beginning. Ports that failed on the previous build will be rebuilt.

  • -continue - Restart an interrupted (or non-finished) build. Will not rebuild ports that failed on the previous build.

  • -incremental - Compare the interesting fields of the new INDEX with the previous one, remove packages and log files for the old ports that have changed, and rebuild the rest. This cuts down on build times substantially since unchanged ports do not get rebuilt every time.

  • -cdrom - This package build is intended to end up on a CD-ROM, so NO_CDROM packages and distfiles should be deleted in post-processing.

  • -nobuild - Perform all the preprocessing steps, but do not actually do the package build.

  • -noindex - Do not rebuild INDEX during preprocessing.

  • -noduds - Do not rebuild the duds file (ports that are never built, e.g., those marked IGNORE, NO_PACKAGE, etc.) during preprocessing.

  • -nochecksubdirs - Do not check the SUBDIRS for ports that are not connected to the build.

  • -trybroken - Try to build BROKEN ports (off by default because the amd64/i386 clusters are fast enough now that when doing incremental builds, more time was spent rebuilding things that were going to fail anyway. Conversely, the other clusters are slow enough that it would be a waste of time to try and build BROKEN ports).

    Note: With -trybroken, you probably also want to use -fetch-original and -unlimited-errors.

  • -nosrc - Do not update the src tree from the ZFS snapshot, keep the tree from previous build instead.

  • -srcvcs - Do not update the src tree from the ZFS snapshot, update it with a fresh checkout instead.

  • -noports - Do not update the ports tree from the ZFS snapshot, keep the tree from previous build instead.

  • -portsvcs - Do not update the ports tree from the ZFS snapshot, update it with a fresh checkout instead.

  • -norestr - Do not attempt to build RESTRICTED ports.

  • -noplistcheck - Do not make it fatal for ports to leave behind files after deinstallation.

  • -nodistfiles - Do not collect distfiles that pass make checksum for later uploading to ftp-master.

  • -fetch-original - Fetch the distfile from the original MASTER_SITES rather than any cache such as on ftp-master.

  • -unlimited-errors - defeat the "qmanager threshhold" check for runaway builds. You want this primarily when doing a -restart of a build that you expect to mostly fail, or perhaps a -trybroken run. By default, the threshhold check is done.

Unless you specify -restart, -continue, or -finish, the symlinks for the existing builds will be rotated. i.e, the existing symlink for previous will be deleted; the most recent build will have its symlink changed to previous/; and a new build will be created and symlinked into latest/.

If the last build finished cleanly you do not need to delete anything. If it was interrupted, or you selected -nocleanup, you need to clean up clients by running

% build cleanup ${arch} ${branch} ${buildid} -full

When a new build is created, the directories errors/, logs/, packages/, and so forth, are cleaned by the scripts. If you are short of space, you can also clean out ports/distfiles/. Leave the latest/ directory alone; it is a symlink for the webserver.

Note: dosetupnodes is supposed to be run from the dopackages script in the -restart case, but it can be a good idea to run it by hand and then verify that the clients all have the expected job load. Sometimes, dosetupnode cannot clean up a build and you need to do it by hand. (This is a bug.)

Make sure the ${arch} build is run as the ports-${arch} user or it will complain loudly.

Note: The actual package build itself occurs in two identical phases. The reason for this is that sometimes transient problems (e.g., NFS failures, FTP sites being unreachable, etc.) may halt a build. Doing things in two phases is a workaround for these types of problems.

Be careful that ports/Makefile does not specify any empty subdirectories. This is especially important if you are doing an -exp build. If the build process encounters an empty subdirectory, both package build phases will stop short, and an error similar to the following will be written to ${arch}/${branch}/journal:

don't know how to make dns-all(continuing)

To correct this problem, simply comment out or remove the SUBDIR entries that point to empty subdirectories. After doing this, you can restart the build by running the proper dopackages command with the -restart option.

Note: This problem also appears if you create a new category Makefile with no SUBDIRs in it. This is probably a bug.

Example 6. Update the i386-7 tree and do a complete build

% dopackages.wrapper i386 7 -nosrc -norestr -nofinish

Example 7. Restart an interrupted amd64-8 build without updating

% dopackages.wrapper amd64 8 -nosrc -noports -norestr -continue -noindex -noduds -nofinish

Example 8. Post-process a completed sparc64-7 tree

% dopackages.wrapper sparc64 7 -finish

Hint: it is usually best to run the dopackages command inside of screen(1).


5.2 build command

You may need to manipulate the build data before starting it, especially for experimental builds. This is done with the build command. Here are the useful options for creation:

  • build create arch branch [newid] - Creates newid (or a datestamp if not specified). Only needed when bringing up a new branch or a new architecture.

  • build clone arch branch oldid [newid] - Clones oldid to newid (or a datestamp if not specified).

  • build srcupdate arch branch buildid - Replaces the src tree with a new ZFS snapshot. Do not forget to use -nosrc flag to dopackages later!

  • build portsupdate arch branch buildid - Replaces the ports tree with a new ZFS snapshot. Do not forget to use -noports flag to dopackages later!


5.3 Building a single package

Sometimes there is a need to rebuild a single package from the package set. This can be accomplished with the following invocation:

# path/qmanager/packagebuild amd64 7-exp 20080904212103 aclock-0.2.3_2.tbz

6 Anatomy of a Build

A full build without any -no options performs the following operations in the specified order:

  1. An update of the current ports tree from the ZFS snapshot[1]

  2. An update of the running branch's src tree from the ZFS snapshot[1]

  3. Checks which ports do not have a SUBDIR entry in their respective category's Makefile[1]

  4. Creates the duds file, which is a list of ports not to build[1][2]

  5. Generates a fresh INDEX file[1][2]

  6. Sets up the nodes that will be used in the build[1][2]

  7. Builds a list of restricted ports[1][2]

  8. Builds packages (phase 1)[3]

  9. Performs another node setup[1]

  10. Builds packages (phase 2)[3]


7 Build Maintenance

There are several cases where you will need to manually clean up a build:

  1. You have manually interrupted it.

  2. The head node has been rebooted while a build was running.

  3. qmanager has crashed and has been restarted.


7.1 Interrupting a Build

Manually interrupting a build is a bit messy. First you need to identify the tty in which it's running (either record the output of tty(1) when you start the build, or use ps x to identify it. You need to make sure that nothing else important is running in this tty, e.g., ps -t p1 or whatever. If there is not, you can just kill off the whole term easily with pkill -t pts/1; otherwise issue a kill -HUP in there by, for example, ps -t pts/1 -o pid= | xargs kill -HUP. Replace p1 by whatever the tty is, of course.

The package builds dispatched by make to the client machines will clean themselves up after a few minutes (check with ps x until they all go away).

If you do not kill make(1), then it will spawn more jobs. If you do not kill dopackages, then it will restart the entire build. If you do not kill the pdispatch processes, they'll keep going (or respawn) until they've built their package.


7.2 Cleaning up a Build

To free up resources, you will need to clean up client machines by running build cleanup command. For example:

% /var/portbuild/scripts/build cleanup i386 8-exp 20080714120411 -full

If you forget to do this, then the old build jails will not be cleaned up for 24 hours, and no new jobs will be dispatched in their place since pointyhat thinks the job slot is still occupied.

To check, cat ~/loads/* to display the status of client machines; the first column is the number of jobs it thinks is running, and this should be roughly concordant with the load average. loads is refreshed every 2 minutes. If you do ps x | grep pdispatch and it is less than the number of jobs that loads thinks are in use, you are in trouble.

You may have problem with the umount commands hanging. If so, you are going to have to use the allgohans script to run an ssh(1) command across all clients for that buildenv. For example:

% ssh gohan24 df

will get you a df, and

% allgohans "umount -f pointyhat.freebsd.org:/var/portbuild/i386/8-exp/ports"
% allgohans "umount -f pointyhat.freebsd.org:/var/portbuild/i386/8-exp/src"

are supposed to get rid of the hanging mounts. You will have to keep doing them since there can be multiple mounts.

Note: Ignore the following:

umount: pointyhat.freebsd.org:/var/portbuild/i386/8-exp/ports: statfs: No such file or directory
umount: pointyhat.freebsd.org:/var/portbuild/i386/8-exp/ports: unknown file system
umount: Cleanup of /x/tmp/8-exp/chroot/53837/compat/linux/proc failed!
/x/tmp/8-exp/chroot/53837/compat/linux/proc: not a file system root directory

The former two mean that the client did not have those mounted; the latter two are a bug.

You may also see messages about procfs.

After you have done all the above, remove the ${arch}/lock file before trying to restart the build. If you do not, dopackages will simply exit.

If you have to do a ports tree update before restarting, you may have to rebuild either duds, INDEX, or both.


7.3 Maintaining builds with the build command

Here are the rest of the options for the build command:

  • build destroy arch branch - Destroy the build id.

  • build list arch branch - Shows the current set of build ids.


8 Monitoring the Build

You can use qclient command to monitor the status of build nodes, and to list the currently scheduled jobs:

% python path/qmanager/qclient jobs
% python path/qmanager/qclient status

The scripts/stats ${branch} command shows the number of packages already built.

Running cat /var/portbuild/*/loads/* shows the client loads and number of concurrent builds in progress. The files that have been recently updated are the clients that are online; the others are the offline clients.

Note: The pdispatch command does the dispatching of work onto the client, and post-processing. ptimeout.host is a watchdog that kills a build after timeouts. So, having 50 pdispatch processes but only 4 ssh(1) processes means 46 pdispatches are idle, waiting to get an idle node.

Running tail -f ${arch}/${branch}/build.log shows the overall build progress.

If a port build is failing, and it is not immediately obvious from the log as to why, you can preserve the WRKDIR for further analysis. To do this, touch a file called .keep in the port's directory. The next time the cluster tries to build this port, it will tar, compress, and copy the WRKDIR to ${arch}/${branch}/wrkdirs/.

If you find that the system is looping trying to build the same package over and over again, you may be able to fix the problem by rebuilding the offending package by hand.

If all the builds start failing with complaints that they cannot load the dependent packages, check to see that httpd is still running, and restart it if not.

Keep an eye on df(1) output. If the /var/portbuild file system becomes full then Bad Things™ happen.

The status of all current builds is generated periodically into the packagestats.html file, e.g., http://pointyhat.FreeBSD.org/errorlogs/packagestats.html. For each buildenv, the following is displayed:


9 Dealing With Build Errors

The easiest way to track build failures is to receive the emailed logs and sort them to a folder, so you can maintain a running list of current failures and detect new ones easily. To do this, add an email address to ${branch}/portbuild.conf. You can easily bounce the new ones to maintainers.

After a port appears broken on every build combination multiple times, it is time to mark it BROKEN. Two weeks' notification for the maintainers seems fair.

Note: To avoid build errors with ports that need to be manually fetched, put the distfiles into ~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles. Access restrictions are in place to make sure that only the build clients can access this directory.


10 Release Builds

When building packages for a release, it may be necessary to manually update the ports and src trees to the release tag and use -novcs and -noportsvcs.

To build package sets intended for use on a CD-ROM, use the -cdrom option to dopackages.

If the disk space is not available on the cluster, use -nodistfiles to avoid collecting distfiles.

After the initial build completes, restart the build with -restart -fetch-original to collect updated distfiles as well. Then, once the build is post-processed, take an inventory of the list of files fetched:

% cd ${arch}/${branch}
% find distfiles > distfiles-${release}

This inventory file typically lives in i386/${branch} on the cluster master.

This is useful to aid in periodically cleaning out the distfiles from ftp-master. When space gets tight, distfiles from recent releases can be kept while others can be thrown away.

Once the distfiles have been uploaded (see below), the final release package set must be created. Just to be on the safe side, run the ${arch}/${branch}/cdrom.sh script by hand to make sure all the CD-ROM restricted packages and distfiles have been pruned. Then, copy the ${arch}/${branch}/packages directory to ${arch}/${branch}/packages-${release}. Once the packages are safely moved off, contact the Release Engineering Team and inform them of the release package location.

Remember to coordinate with the Release Engineering Team about the timing and status of the release builds.


11 Uploading Packages

Once a build has completed, packages and/or distfiles can be transferred to ftp-master for propagation to the FTP mirror network. If the build was run with -nofinish, then make sure to follow up with dopackages -finish to post-process the packages (removes RESTRICTED and NO_CDROM packages where appropriate, prunes packages not listed in INDEX, removes from INDEX references to packages not built, and generates a CHECKSUM.MD5 summary); and distfiles (moves them from the temporary distfiles/.pbtmp directory into distfiles/ and removes RESTRICTED and NO_CDROM distfiles).

It is usually a good idea to run the restricted.sh and/or cdrom.sh scripts by hand after dopackages finishes just to be safe. Run the restricted.sh script before uploading to ftp-master, then run cdrom.sh before preparing the final package set for a release.

The package subdirectories are named by whether they are for release, stable, or current. Examples:

Note: Some of the directories on ftp-master are, in fact, symlinks. Examples:

  • packages-stable

  • packages-current

Be sure you move the new packages directory over the real destination directory, and not one of the symlinks that points to it.

If you are doing a completely new package set (e.g., for a new release), copy packages to the staging area on ftp-master with something like the following:

# cd /var/portbuild/${arch}/${branch}
# tar cfv - packages/ | ssh portmgr@ftp-master tar xfC - w/ports/${arch}/tmp/${subdir}

Then log into ftp-master, verify that the package set was transferred successfully, remove the package set that the new package set is to replace (in ~/w/ports/${arch}), and move the new set into place. (w/ is merely a shortcut.)

For incremental builds, packages should be uploaded using rsync so we do not put too much strain on the mirrors.

ALWAYS use -n first with rsync and check the output to make sure it is sane. If it looks good, re-run the rsync without the -n option.

Example rsync command for incremental package upload:

# rsync -n -r -v -l -t -p --delete packages/ portmgr@ftp-master:w/ports/${arch}/${subdir}/ | tee log

Distfiles should be transferred with the cpdistfiles script:

# /var/portbuild/scripts/cpdistfiles ${arch} ${branch} ${buildid} [-yesreally] | tee log2

Doing it by hand is deprecated.


12 Experimental Patches Builds

Experimental patches builds are run from time to time to new features or bugfixes to the ports infrastructure (i.e. bsd.port.mk), or to test large sweeping upgrades. At any given time there may be several simultaneous experimental patches branches, such as 8-exp on the amd64 architecture.

In general, an experimental patches build is run the same way as any other build, except that you should first update the ports tree to the latest version and then apply your patches. To do the former, you can use the following:

Note: The following example is obsolete

% cvs -R update -dP > update.out
% date > .updated

This will most closely simulate what the dopackages script does. (While .updated is merely informative, it can be a help.)

You will need to edit update.out to look for lines beginning with ^M, ^C, or ^? and then deal with them.

It is always a good idea to save original copies of all changed files, as well as a list of what you are changing. You can then look back on this list when doing the final commit, to make sure you are committing exactly what you tested.

Since the machine is shared, someone else may delete your changes by mistake, so keep a copy of them in e.g., your home directory on freefall. Do not use tmp/; since pointyhat itself runs some version of -CURRENT, you can expect reboots (if nothing else, for updates).

In order to have a good control case with which to compare failures, you should first do a package build of the branch on which the experimental patches branch is based for the i386 architecture (currently this is 8). Then, when preparing for the experimental patches build, checkout a ports tree and a src tree with the same date as was used for the control build. This will ensure an apples-to-apples comparison later.

Once the build finishes, compare the control build failures to those of the experimental patches build. Use the following commands to facilitate this (this assumes the 8 branch is the control branch, and the 8-exp branch is the experimental patches branch):

% cd /var/portbuild/i386/8-exp/errors
% find . -name \*.log\* | sort > /tmp/8-exp-errs
% cd /var/portbuild/i386/8/errors
% find . -name \*.log\* | sort > /tmp/8-errs

Note: If it has been a long time since one of the builds finished, the logs may have been automatically compressed with bzip2. In that case, you must use sort | sed 's,\.bz2,,g' instead.

% comm -3 /tmp/8-errs /tmp/8-exp-errs | less

This last command will produce a two-column report. The first column is ports that failed on the control build but not in the experimental patches build; the second column is vice versa. Reasons that the port might be in the first column include:

Reasons for a port appearing in the second column include:

Both columns should be investigated and the reason for the errors understood before committing the experimental patches set. To differentiate between broken by experimental patches and broken by upgrading above, you can do a rebuild of the affected packages under the control branch:

% cd /var/portbuild/i386/8/ports

Note: The following example is obsolete

Note: Be sure to cvs update this tree to the same date as the experimental patches tree.

The following command will set up the control branch for the partial build (old codebase):

% /var/portbuild/scripts/dopackages.8 -noportsvcs -nobuild -novcs -nofinish

The builds must be performed from the packages/All directory. This directory should initially be empty except for the Makefile symlink. If this symlink does not exist, it must be created:

% cd /var/portbuild/i386/8/packages/All
% ln -sf ../../Makefile .
% make -k -j<#> <list of packages to build>

Note: <#> is the concurrency of the build to attempt. It is usually the sum of the weights listed in /var/portbuild/i386/mlist unless you have a reason to run a heavier or lighter build.

The list of packages to build should be a list of package names (including versions) as they appear in INDEX. The PKGSUFFIX (i.e., .tgz or .tbz) is optional.

This will build only those packages listed as well as all of their dependencies.

You can check the progress of this partial build the same way you would a regular build.

Once all the errors have been resolved, you can commit the package set. After committing, it is customary to send a HEADS UP email to [email protected] and copy [email protected] informing people of the changes. A summary of all changes should also be committed to /usr/ports/CHANGES.


13 How to configure a new package building node

Before following these steps, please coordinate with portmgr.

Note: Due to some generous donations, portmgr is no longer looking for the loan of i386 or amd64 systems. However, we are still interested in borrowing tier-2 systems.


13.1 Node requirements

portmgr is still working on characterizing what a node needs to be generally useful.

  • CPU capacity: anything less than 500MHz is generally not useful for package building.

    Note: We are able to adjust the number of jobs dispatched to each machine, and we generally tune the number to use 100% of CPU.

  • RAM: Less than 2G is not very useful; 8G or more is preferred. We have been tuning to one job per 512M of RAM.

  • disk: at least 20G is needed for filesystem; 32G is needed for swap. Best performance will be if multiple disks are used, and configured as geom stripes. Performance numbers are also TBA.

    Note: Package building will test disk drives to destruction. Be aware of what you are signing up for!

  • network bandwidth: TBA. However, an 8-job machine has been shown to saturate a cable modem line.


13.2 Preparation

  1. Pick a unique hostname. It does not have to be a publicly resolvable hostname (it can be a name on your internal network).

  2. By default, package building requires the following TCP ports to be accessible: 22 (ssh), 414 (infoseek), and 8649 (ganglia). If these are not accessible, pick others and ensure that an ssh tunnel is set up (see below).

    (Note: if you have more than one machine at your site, you will need an individual TCP port for each service on each machine, and thus ssh tunnels will be necessary. As such, you will probably need to configure port forwarding on your firewall.)

  3. Decide if you will be booting natively or via pxeboot. You will find that it is easier to keep up with changes to -current with the latter, especially if you have multiple machines at your site.

  4. Pick a directory to hold ports configuration and chroot subdirectories. It may be best to put it this on its own partition. (Example: /usr2/.)

    Note: The filename chroot is a historical remnant.


13.3 Configuring src

  1. Create a directory to contain the latest -current source tree and check it out. (Since your machine will likely be asked to build packages for -current, the kernel it runs should be reasonably up-to-date with the bindist that will be exported by our scripts.)

  2. If you are using pxeboot: create a directory to contain the install bits. You will probably want to use a subdirectory of /pxeroot, e.g., /pxeroot/${arch}-${branch}. Export that as DESTDIR.

  3. If you are cross-building, export TARGET_ARCH=${arch}.

    Note: The procedure for cross-building ports is not yet defined.

  4. Generate a kernel config file. Include GENERIC (or, if you are using more than 3.5G on i386, PAE).

    Required options:

    options         NULLFS
    options         TMPFS
    

    Suggested options:

    options         GEOM_CONCAT
    options         GEOM_STRIPE
    options         SHMMAXPGS=65536
    options         SEMMNI=40
    options         SEMMNS=240
    options         SEMUME=40
    options         SEMMNU=120
    
    options         ALT_BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER
    

    For PAE, it is not currently possible to load modules. Therefore, if you are running an architecture that supports Linux emulation, you will need to add:

    options         COMPAT_LINUX
    options         LINPROCFS
    

    Also for PAE, as of 20110912 you need the following. This needs to be investigated:

    nooption        NFSD                    # New Network Filesystem Server
    options         NFSCLIENT               # Network Filesystem Client
    options         NFSSERVER               # Network Filesystem Server
    
  5. As root, do the usual build steps, e.g.:

    # make -j4 buildworld
    # make buildkernel KERNCONF=${kernconf}
    # make installkernel KERNCONF=${kernconf}
    # make installworld
    

    The install steps use DESTDIR.

  6. Customize files in etc/. Whether you do this on the client itself, or another machine, will depend on whether you are using pxeboot.

    If you are using pxeboot: create a subdirectory of ${DESTDIR} called conf/. Create one subdirectory default/etc/, and (if your site will host multiple nodes), subdirectories ${ip-address}/etc/ to contain override files for individual hosts. (You may find it handy to symlink each of those directories to a hostname.) Copy the entire contents of ${DESTDIR}/etc/ to default/etc/; that is where you will edit your files. The by-ip-address etc/ directories will probably only need customized rc.conf files.

    In either case, apply the following steps:

    • Create a ports-${arch} user and group. It can have the '*' password.

      Create /home/ports-${arch}/.ssh/ and populate authorized_keys.

    • Also add the following users:

      squid:*:100:100::0:0:User &:/usr/local/squid:/bin/sh
      ganglia:*:102:102::0:0:User &:/usr/local/ganglia:/bin/sh
      

      Add them to etc/group as well.

    • Create the appropriate files in etc/.ssh/.

    • In etc/crontab: add

      *       *       *       *       *       root    /var/portbuild/scripts/client-metrics
      
    • Create the appropriate etc/fstab. (If you have multiple, different, machines, you will need to put those in the override directories.)

    • In etc/inetd.conf: add

      infoseek        stream  tcp     nowait  nobody  /var/portbuild/scripts/reportload
      
    • You should run the cluster on UTC. If you have not set the clock to UTC:

      # cp -p /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC etc/localtime
      
    • Create the appropriate etc/rc.conf. (If you are using pxeboot, and have multiple, different, machines, you will need to put those in the override directories.)

      Recommended entries for physical nodes:

      hostname="${hostname}"
      inetd_enable="YES"
      linux_enable="YES"
      nfs_client_enable="YES"
      ntpd_enable="YES"
      sendmail_enable="NONE"
      sshd_enable="YES"
      sshd_program="/usr/local/sbin/sshd"
      
      gmond_enable="YES"
      squid_enable="YES"
      squid_chdir="/usr2/squid/logs"
      squid_pidfile="/usr2/squid/logs/squid.pid"
      

      Required entries for VMWare-based nodes:

      vmware_guest_vmmemctl_enable="YES"
      vmware_guest_guestd_enable="YES"
      

      Recommended entries for VMWare-based nodes:

      hostname=""
      ifconfig_em0="DHCP"
      fsck_y_enable="YES"
      
      inetd_enable="YES"
      linux_enable="YES"
      nfs_client_enable="YES"
      sendmail_enable="NONE"
      sshd_enable="YES"
      sshd_program="/usr/local/sbin/sshd"
      
      gmond_enable="YES"
      squid_enable="YES"
      squid_chdir="/usr2/squid/logs"
      squid_pidfile="/usr2/squid/logs/squid.pid"
      

      ntpd(8) should not be enabled for VMWare instances.

      Also, it may be possible to leave squid disabled by default so as to not have /usr2 persistent (which should save instantiation time.) Work is still ongoing.

    • Create etc/resolv.conf, if necessary.

    • Modify etc/sysctl.conf:

      9a10,30
      > kern.corefile=/usr2/%N.core
      > kern.sugid_coredump=1
      > #debug.witness_ddb=0
      > #debug.witness_watch=0
      >
      > # squid needs a lot of fds (leak?)
      > kern.maxfiles=40000
      > kern.maxfilesperproc=30000
      >
      > # Since the NFS root is static we do not need to check frequently for file changes
      > # This saves >75% of NFS traffic
      > vfs.nfs.access_cache_timeout=300
      > debug.debugger_on_panic=1
      >
      > # For jailing
      > security.jail.sysvipc_allowed=1
      > security.jail.allow_raw_sockets=1
      > security.jail.chflags_allowed=1
      > security.jail.enforce_statfs=1
      >
      > vfs.lookup_shared=1
      
    • If desired, modify etc/syslog.conf to change the logging destinations to @pointyhat.freebsd.org.


13.4 Configuring ports

  1. Install the following ports:

    net/rsync
    security/openssh-portable (with HPN on)
    security/sudo
    sysutils/ganglia-monitor-core (with GMETAD off)
    www/squid (with SQUID_AUFS on)
    

    There is a WIP to create a meta-port, but it is not yet complete.

  2. Customize files in usr/local/etc/. Whether you do this on the client itself, or another machine, will depend on whether you are using pxeboot.

    Note: The trick of using conf override subdirectories is less effective here, because you would need to copy over all subdirectories of usr/. This is an implementation detail of how the pxeboot works.

    Apply the following steps:

    • Modify usr/local/etc/gmond.conf:

      21,22c21,22
      <   name = "unspecified"
      <   owner = "unspecified"
      ---
      >   name = "${arch} package build cluster"
      >   owner = "[email protected]"
      24c24
      <   url = "unspecified"
      ---
      >   url = "http://pointyhat.freebsd.org"
      

      If there are machines from more than one cluster in the same multicast domain (basically = LAN) then change the multicast groups to different values (.71, .72, etc).

    • Create usr/local/etc/rc.d/portbuild.sh, using the appropriate value for scratchdir:

      #!/bin/sh
      #
      # Configure a package build system post-boot
      
      scratchdir=/usr2
      
      ln -sf ${scratchdir}/portbuild /var/
      
      # Identify builds ready for use
      cd /var/portbuild/arch
      for i in */builds/*; do
          if [ -f ${i}/.ready ]; then
              mkdir /tmp/.setup-${i##*/}
          fi
      done
      
      # Flag that we are ready to accept jobs
      touch /tmp/.boot_finished
      
    • Modify usr/local/etc/squid/squid.conf:

      288,290c288,290
      < #auth_param basic children 5
      < #auth_param basic realm Squid proxy-caching web server
      < #auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours
      ---
      > auth_param basic children 5
      > auth_param basic realm Squid proxy-caching web server
      > auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours
      611a612
      > acl localnet src 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0
      655a657
      > http_access allow localnet
      2007a2011
      > maximum_object_size 400 MB
      2828a2838
      > negative_ttl 0 minutes
      

      Also, change usr/local to usr2 in cache_dir, access_log, cache_log, cache_store_log, pid_filename, netdb_filename, coredump_dir.

      Finally, change the cache_dir storage scheme from ufs to aufs (offers better performance).

    • Configure ssh: copy etc/ssh to usr/local/etc/ssh and add NoneEnabled yes to sshd_config.

    • Note: This step is under review.

      Create usr/local/etc/sudoers/sudoers.d/portbuild:

      # local changes for package building
      %wheel        ALL=(ALL) ALL
      ports-${arch}    ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
      

13.5 Configuration on the client itself

  1. Change into the port/package directory you picked above, e.g., cd /usr2.

  2. As root:

    # mkdir portbuild
    # chown ports-${arch}:ports-${arch} portbuild
    # mkdir pkgbuild
    # chown ports-${arch}:ports-${arch} pkgbuild
    # mkdir squid
    # mkdir squid/cache
    # mkdir squid/logs
    # chown -R squid:squid squid
    
  3. If clients preserve /var/portbuild between boots then they must either preserve their /tmp, or revalidate their available builds at boot time (see the script on the amd64 machines). They must also clean up stale jails from previous builds before creating /tmp/.boot_finished.

  4. Boot the client.

  5. As root, initialize the squid directories:

    squid -z
    

13.6 Configuration on the server

These steps need to be taken by a portmgr acting as ports-${arch} on the server.

  1. If any of the default TCP ports is not available (see above), you will need to create an ssh tunnel for them and include its invocation command in ports-${arch}'s crontab.

  2. Unless you can use the defaults, add an entry to /home/ports-${arch}/.ssh/config to specify the public IP address, TCP port for ssh, username, and any other necessary information.

  3. Create /var/portbuild/${arch}/clients/bindist-${hostname}.tar.

    • Copy one of the existing ones as a template and unpack it in a temporary directory.

    • Customize etc/resolv.conf for the local site.

    • Customize etc/make.conf for FTP fetches for the local site. Note: the nulling-out of MASTER_SITE_BACKUP must be common to all nodes, but the first entry in MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE should be the nearest local FTP mirror. Example:

      .if defined(FETCH_ORIGINAL)
      MASTER_SITE_BACKUP=
      .else
      MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE= \
      	ftp://friendly-local-ftp-mirror/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR}/ \
      	ftp://${BACKUP_FTP_SITE}/pub/FreeBSD/distfiles/${DIST_SUBDIR}/
      .endif
      
    • tar it up and move it to the right location.

    Hint: you will need one of these for each machine; however, if you have multiple machines at one site, you should create a site-specific one (e.g., in /var/portbuild/conf/clients/) and symlink to it.

  4. Create /var/portbuild/${arch}/portbuild-${hostname} using one of the existing ones as a guide. This file contains overrides to /var/portbuild/${arch}/portbuild.conf.

    Suggested values:

    disconnected=1
    http_proxy="http://localhost:3128/"
    squid_dir=/usr2/squid
    scratchdir=/usr2/pkgbuild
    client_user=ports-${arch}
    sudo_cmd="sudo -H"
    rsync_gzip=-z
    
    infoseek_host=localhost
    infoseek_port=${tunelled-tcp-port}
    

    Possible other values:

    use_md_swap=1
    md_size=9g
    use_zfs=1
    scp_cmd="/usr/local/bin/scp"
    ssh_cmd="/usr/local/bin/ssh"
    

These steps need to be taken by a portmgr acting as root on pointyhat.

  1. Add the public IP address to /etc/hosts.allow. (Remember, multiple machines can be on the same IP address.)

  2. Add an appropriate data_source entry to /usr/local/etc/gmetad.conf:

    data_source "arch/location Package Build Cluster" 30 hostname
    

    You will need to restart gmetad.


13.7 Enabling the node

These steps need to be taken by a portmgr acting as ports-arch:

  1. Ensure that ssh to the client is working by executing ssh hostname uname -a. The actual command is not important; what is important is to confirm the setup, and also add an entry into known_hosts, once you have confirmed the node's identity.

  2. Populate the client's copy of /var/portbuild/scripts/ by something like /var/portbuild/scripts/dosetupnode arch major latest hostname. Verify that you now have files in that directory.

  3. Test the other TCP ports by executing telnet hostname portnumber. 414 (or its tunnel) should give you a few lines of status information including arch and osversion; 8649 should give you an XML response from ganglia.

This step needs to be taken by a portmgr acting as root:

  1. Tell qmanager about the node. Example:

    python path/qmanager/qclient add name=uniquename arch=arch osversion=osversion numcpus=number haszfs=0 online=1 domain=domain primarypool=package pools="package all" maxjobs=1 acl="ports-arch,deny_all"

Finally, again as portmgr acting as ports-arch:

  1. Once you are sure that the client is working, tell pollmachine about it by adding it to /var/portbuild/${arch}/mlist.


14 How to configure a new FreeBSD branch

14.1 Steps necessary before qmanager is started

When a new branch is created, some work needs to be done to specify that the previous branch is no longer equivalent to HEAD.

  • Edit /var/portbuild/conf/server.conf with the following changes:

    • Add new-branch to SRC_BRANCHES.

    • For what was previously head, change SRC_BRANCH_branch_SUBDIR to releng/branch.0 (literal zero).

    • Add SRC_BRANCH_new-branch_SUBDIR =head.

  • Run /var/portbuild/updatesnap manually.


14.2 Steps necessary after qmanager is started

Note: Again, as ports-arch:

  • For each branch that will be supported, do the following:


15 How to delete an unsupported FreeBSD branch

When an old branch goes out of support, there are some things to garbage-collect.


16 How to rebase on a supported FreeBSD branch

As of 2011, the philosophy of package building is to build packages based on the earliest supported release of each branch. e.g.: if on RELENG-8, the following releases are supported: 8.1, 8.2, 8.3; then packages-8-stable should be built from 8.1.

As releases go End-Of-Life (see chart), a full (not incremental!) package build should be done and uploaded.

The procedure is as follows:


17 How to configure a new architecture

17.1 Steps necessary before qmanager is started

Note: The initial steps need to be done using sudo.

  • Create a new ports-arch user and group.

  • mkdir /var/portbuild/arch
    
  • Create a new zfs filesystem:

    # zfs create -o mountpoint=/a/portbuild/arch a/portbuild/arch
    
  • # chown ports-arch:portbuild /var/portbuild/arch;
    # chmod 775 /var/portbuild/arch;
    # cd /var/portbuild/arch
    
  • Create the .ssh directory.

Note: The next steps are most easily done as user ports-arch.

  • Create an archive directory for buildlogs and errorlogs under archive/.

  • For each branch that will be supported, do the following:

    • Kick-start the build for the branch with

      # build create arch branch
      
  • If you are going to store your historical buildlogs and errorlogs on your head node's hard drive, you may skip this step. Otherwise:

    Create an external directory and link to it:

    Example 9. Creating and linking an external archive directory

    # mkdir /dumpster/pointyhat/arch/archive
    # ln -s /dumpster/pointyhat/arch/archive archive
    

    Note: (Historical note that only applied to the original pointyhat.FreeBSD.org installation)

    It is possible that /dumpster/pointyhat will not have enough space. In that case, create the archive directory as /dumpster/pointyhat/arch/archive and symlink to that.

  • Populate clients as usual.

  • Create a fresh portbuild.conf file from one of the ones for another architecture.

  • Create customized portbuild.machinename.conf files as appropriate.

  • # cd .ssh && ssh-keygen
    
  • If desired, edit the .ssh/config file for convenience in using ssh.

  • If you need to create any tunnels:

    1. Make a private configuration directory:

      # mkdir /var/portbuild/conf/arch
      
    2. In that directory: create any dotunnel.* scripts needed.

Note: Once again using sudo:

  • Add arch to SUPPORTED_ARCHS in /var/portbuild/conf/server.conf.

  • Add the arch directory to /var/portbuild/scripts/zbackup and /var/portbuild/scripts/zexpire.

Note: One last time using sudo:

  • Add an appropriate arch entry for /var/portbuild/scripts/dologs to the root crontab. (This is a hack and should go away.)


17.2 Steps necessary after qmanager is started

Note: Again using sudo:

  • Tell qmanager about the arch:

    python path/qmanager/qclient add_acl name=ports-arch uidlist=ports-arch gidlist=portbuild sense=1
    
  • For each branch that will be supported, do the following:


18 How to configure a new head node (pointyhat instance)

Please talk to Mark Linimon before making any changes to this section.


18.1 Basic installation

  1. Install FreeBSD.

  2. Create a user to own the portbuild repository, such as portbuild. It should have the '*' password.

  3. Export that value for a later initialization step:

    # export PORTBUILD_USER=portbuild
    
  4. Add the following to /boot/loader.conf:

    console="vidconsole,comconsole"
    
  5. You should run the cluster on UTC. If you have not set the clock to UTC:

    # cp -p /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC /etc/localtime
    
  6. Create the appropriate /etc/rc.conf.

    Required entries:

    hostname="${hostname}"
    sshd_enable="YES"
    

    Recommended entries:

    background_fsck="NO"
    clear_tmp_enable="YES"
    dumpdev="AUTO"
    fsck_y_enable="YES"
    
    apache22_enable="YES"
    apache_flags=""
    apache_pidfile="/var/run/httpd.pid"
    gmetad_enable="YES"
    gmond_enable="YES"
    inetd_enable="YES"
    # XXX MCL try these instead.
    inetd_flags="-R 10000 -l -w"
    mountd_enable="YES"
    nfs_server_enable="YES"
    nfs_server_flags="-u -t -n 12"
    nfs_remote_port_only="YES"
    ntpd_enable="YES"
    rpcbind_enable="YES"
    rpc_lockd_enable="NO"
    rpc_statd_enable="YES"
    sendmail_enable="NONE"
    smartd_enable="YES"
    zfs_enable="YES"
    
  7. Create /etc/resolv.conf, if necessary.

  8. Create the appropriate files in /etc/ssh/.

  9. Add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf:

    kern.maxfiles=40000
    kern.maxfilesperproc=38000
    sysctl vfs.usermount=1
    sysctl vfs.zfs.super_owner=1
    
  10. Make sure the following change is made to /etc/ttys:

    ttyu0   "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"   vt100   on secure
    

18.2 Configuring src

You should be able to install from the most recent release using only the default kernel configuration.


18.3 Configuring ports

  1. The following ports (or their latest successors) are required:

    databases/py-sqlite3
    databases/py-sqlalchemy (only SQLITE is needed)
    devel/git (WITH_SVN)
    devel/py-configobj
    devel/py-setuptools
    devel/subversion
    net/nc
    net/rsync
    sysutils/ganglia-monitor-core (with GMETAD off)
    sysutils/ganglia-webfrontend (compile with -DWITHOUT_X11)
    www/apache22 (with EXT_FILTER)
    

    Expect those to bring in, among others:

    databases/sqlite3
    lang/perl-5.14 (or successor)
    lang/python27 (or sucessor)
    

    The following ports (or their latest successors) are strongly suggested:

    devel/ccache
    mail/postfix
    net/isc-dhcp41-server
    ports-mgmt/pkg
    ports-mgmt/portaudit
    ports-mgmt/portmaster
    security/sudo
    shells/bash
    shells/zsh
    sysutils/screen
    

    The following ports (or their latest successors) are handy:

    benchmarks/bonnie++
    ports-mgmt/pkg_tree
    sysutils/dmidecode
    sysutils/smartmontools
    sysutils/zfs-stats
    

18.4 Configuring the zfs volume and setting up the repository

The following steps need to be done as euid root.

  1. Pick a zfs volume name and export it. We have used a so far to date.

    # export ZFS_VOLUME=a
    
  2. Pick a mountpoint and export it. We have used /a so far to date.

    # export ZFS_MOUNTPOINT=/a
    
  3. Create the zfs volume and mount it.

    Example 10. Creating a zfs volume for portbuild

    # zpool create ${ZFS_VOLUME} mirror da1 da2 mirror da3 da4 mirror da5 da6 mirror da7 da8
    

    Note: We will define a zfs permission set below, so that the portbuild user may administer this volume without having to have root privileges.

  4. Select an svn repository and export it. See the FreeBSD Handbook for the currently supported list.

    # export VCS_REPOSITORY=svn://svn0.us-east.FreeBSD.org
    
  5. Obtain a copy of the kickstart script into a temporary directory. (You will not need to keep this directory later.)

    # mkdir -p /home/portbuild/tmp
    # svn checkout ${VCS_REPOSITORY}/base/projects/portbuild/tools /home/portbuild/tmp
    
  6. Run the kickstart script:

    # sh /home/portbuild/tmp/mkportbuild
    

    This will accomplish all the following 5 steps:

    1. Create the portbuild directory:

      # mkdir -p ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild
      
    2. Create and mount a new zfs filesystem on it:

      zfs create -o mountpoint=${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild ${ZFS_VOLUME}/portbuild
      
    3. Set up the directory:

      # chown ${PORTBUILD_USER}:${PORTBUILD_USER} ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild
      # chmod 775 ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild
      # ln -sf ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild /var/portbuild
      

      Note: The ln is necessary due to a number of hardcoded paths. This is a bug.

    4. set up the repository:

      % svn checkout ${VCS_REPOSITORY}/base/projects/portbuild ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/portbuild
      
    5. Set up the zfs permission set:

      # ${ZFS_MOUNTPOINT}/tools/zfsadmin
      

18.5 Configuring the portbuild files

  1. Configure how build slaves will talk to your server by making the following changes to /a/portbuild/conf/client.conf:

    • Set CLIENT_NFS_MASTER to wherever your build slaves will PXE boot from. (Possibly, the hostname of your server.)

    • Set CLIENT_BACKUP_FTP_SITE to a backup site for FTP fetches; again, possibly the hostname of your server.

    • Set CLIENT_UPLOAD_HOST to where completed packages will be uploaded.

    Most of the other default values should be fine.

  2. Most of the default values in /a/portbuild/conf/common.conf should be fine. This file holds definitions used by both the server and all its clients.

  3. Configure the server by making the following changes to /a/portbuild/conf/server.conf:

    • Set SUPPORTED_ARCHS to the list of architectures you wish to build packages for.

    • For each source branch you will be building for, set SRC_BRANCHES and SRC_BRANCH_branch_SUBDIR as detailed in Section 14.1. You should not need to change SRC_BRANCHES_PATTERN.

    • Set ZFS_VOLUME and ZFS_MOUNTPOINT to whatever you chose above.

    • Set UPLOAD_DIRECTORY, UPLOAD_TARGET, and UPLOAD_USER as appropriate for your site.

    • Set VCS_REPOSITORY to whatever you chose above.

    • Set MASTER_URL to the http URL of your server. This will be stamped into the package build logs and the indices thereof.

    Most of the other default values should be fine.


18.6 pre-qmanager

  1. For each architecture, follow the steps in Section 17.1.


18.7 qmanager

  1. Copy the following files from /var/portbuild/etc/rc.d/ to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/:

    buildproxy
    pollmachine
    qmanager
    

    As root, start each one of them. You may find it handy to start each under screen for debugging purposes.

  2. Initialize the qmanager database's acl list:

    Note: This should now be automatically done for you by the first build command.

    # python /a/portbuild/qmanager/qclient add_acl name=deny_all uidlist= gidlist= sense=0
    

18.8 Creating src and ports repositories

  1. As the portbuild user, run the following commands manually to create the src and ports repositories, respectively:

    % /a/portbuild/scripts/updatesnap.ports
    % /a/portbuild/scripts/updatesnap
    

    These will be periodically run from the portbuild crontab, which you will install below.


18.9 Other services

  1. Configure /usr/local/etc/apache22/httpd.conf as appropriate for your site.

  2. Copy /var/portbuild/conf/apache.conf to the appropriate Includes/ subdirectory, e.g., /usr/local/etc/apache22/Includes/portbuild.conf. Configure it as appropriate for your site.

  3. Install /var/portbuild/crontabs/root as the root crontab via crontab -e.

  4. Install /var/portbuild/crontabs/portbuild as the portbuild crontab via crontab -u portbuild -e. If you do not support all the archs listed there, make sure to comment out the appropriate dologs entries.

  5. If your build slaves will be pxebooted, make sure to enable the tftp entries in /etc/inetd.conf.

  6. Configure mail by doing the following:

    newaliases.


18.10 Finishing up

  1. For each architecture, follow the steps in Section 17.2.

  2. At some point, you will probably find it handy to append the following to the PATH definition for the portbuild user:

    /a/portbuild/scripts:/a/portbuild/tools
    

You should now be ready to build packages.


19 Procedures for dealing with disk failures

Note: The following section is particular to freebsd.org and is somewhat obsolete.

When a machine has a disk failure (e.g., panics due to read errors, etc), then we should do the following steps:

When a disk has failed, please inform the cluster administrators so we can try to get it replaced.

Notes

[1]

Status of these steps can be found in ${arch}/${branch}/build.log as well as on stderr of the tty running the dopackages command.

[2]

If any of these steps fail, the build will stop cold in its tracks.

[3]

Status of these steps can be found in ${arch}/${branch}/journal. Individual ports will write their build logs to ${arch}/${branch}/logs/ and their error logs to ${arch}/${branch}/errors/.