As a purchaser of the OpenBSD CD-ROM you already have several popular ``packages'', the ``ports'' collection, and some of the ``ports'' source file releases. Installing applications from the CD-ROM package collection: The OpenBSD CD-ROM ships with several applications pre-built for various hardware architectures. The number of applications vary according to available disk space. Check the directory 2.7/packages/ to see which packages are available for your hardware architecture. To install one or more of these packages you must 1) become the superuser (root) 2) mount the appropriage CD-ROM 3) use the ``pkg_add'' command to install the software Example (in which we use su(1) to get superuser privileges, thus you have to be in group "wheel", see the manual page for su(1)). $ su Password: # mkdir -p /cdrom # mount /dev/cd0a /cdrom # cd /cdrom/2.7/packages/ # pkg_add -v # # umount /cdrom Your hardware architecture can be determined by issuing the command ``arch''. The response will be something like ``OpenBSD.sparc''. ``sparc'' is the architecture. Package names are usually the application name and version with .tgz appended, e.g. emacs-20.3.tgz Installing applications from the ftp.openbsd.org package collection: All packages have been placed on ftp.openbsd.org in the directory pub/OpenBSD/2.7/packages// where is the supported hardware architecture. You may want to peruse the directory for your architecture to see what packages are available. The packages are also on the OpenBSD FTP mirror sites. See http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html for a list of current ftp mirror sites. Installation of a package is very easy. 1) become the superuser (root) 2) use the ``pkg_add'' command to install the software ``pkg_add'' is smart enough to know how to download the software from the OpenBSD ftp server. Example: $ su Password: # pkg_add -v ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/2.7/packages//emacs-20.3.tgz Packages available include: Go see pub/OpenBSD/2.7/packages/i386/ pub/OpenBSD/2.7/packages/m68k/ pub/OpenBSD/2.7/packages/alpha/ Note: these packages may not exist for all architectures; other packages may be added. Installing applications from the CD-ROM ports collection: The CD-ROM ``ports'' collection is a set of Makefiles, patches, and other files used to control the building and installation of an application from source files. The source files come from archives which are also, for the most part, on the OpenBSD CD-ROM. Creating an application from sources can require a lot of disk space, sometimes 50 megabytes or more. The first step is to determine which of your disks has enough room. Once you've made this determination read the file README.ports on CD-ROM 2 to see how to copy or mount the ports directory. To build an application you must: 1) become the superuser (root) 2) mount CD-ROM number 2 on the directory /cdrom. This is necessary to find the application source files. 3) cd to the ports directory containing the port you wish to build. To build samba, for example, where you'd previously copied the ports files into the /usr/ports directory: cd /usr/ports/net/samba 4) make FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES=YES 5) make FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES=YES install 6) make FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES=YES clean The FETCH_SYMLINK_DISTFILES=YES parameter tells make not to copy the application's distribution sources from the cdrom to your hard disk, but instead create a symbolic link pointing to the CD-ROM. This is done to conserve disk space. Installing applications from the OpenBSD ports collection: See http://www.openbsd.org/ports.html for current instructions on obtaining and installing OpenBSD ports. Installing other applications: If an OpenBSD package or port does not exist for an application you're pretty much on your own. The first thing to do is ask ports@openbsd.org if anyone is working on a port -- there may be one in progress. If no luck there you may try the FreeBSD ports or NetBSD package collection. If you are on an i386 based machine it is quite possible that the FreeBSD port, if one exists, will work for you. If you can't find an existing port try to make your own and feed it back to OpenBSD. That's how our ports collection grows. Some details can be found at http://www.openbsd.org/porting.html with more help coming from the mailing list, ports@openbsd.org.