mport

MidnightBSD Package Manager

Requirements

Recent versions will run on MidnightBSD 3.0 and higher.

Depends on:

• sqlite3
• libarchive
• bzip2
• lzma
• ucl

Versions prior to 2.1.0 also depended on

• libdispatch
• Blocksruntime

Backward compatibility

The last version that works with MidnightBSD 1.2.8 or lower is mport 2.1.4. (lack of libucl)

There was a breaking change in 2.1.6 in libmport with respect to mport_install and mport_install_primative use.

There was a breaking change in 2.6.0 in libmport which changed the mport_init function to use mportVerbosity rather than a boolean for quiet mode.

mportVerbosity has three values currently: MPORT_VQUIET, MPORT_VNORMAL, MPORT_VVERBOSE

There's also the new mport_verbosity function which translates quiet and verbose flags into the right value.

Using mport

In addition to the man page, you can also look at the BSD Magazine article on mport in the Feb 2012 issue. https://ia902902.us.archive.org/6/items/bsdmagazine/BSD_02_2012.pdf

Quick and Dirty

Installing a package named xorg:

mport install xorg

Deleting the xorg meta-package:

mport delete xorg

Fetching the latest index

mport index

Upgrading all packages

mport upgrade

Update a specific package (and its dependencies)

mport update xorg

Installing from package file

For example, installing a vim package that is already built locally

/usr/libexec/mport.install /usr/mports/Packages/amd64/All/vim-8.2.3394.mport

Getting info on an installed package

mport info gmake

gmake-4.3_2
Name            : gmake
Version         : 4.3_2
Latest          : 4.3_2
Licenses        : gpl3
Origin          : devel/gmake
Flavor          : 
OS              : 3.0
CPE             : cpe:2.3:a:gnu:make:4.3:::::midnightbsd3:x64:2
PURL            : pkg:mport/midnightbsd/[email protected]_2?arch=amd64&osrel=3.0
Locked          : no
Prime           : yes
Shared library  : no
Deprecated      : no
Expiration Date : 
Install Date    : Tue Mar 28 17:51:14 2023
Comment         : GNU version of 'make' utility
Options         : 
Type            : Application
Description     :

Security-related commands

mport audit Displays vulnerable packages based on their CPE identifiers using the NVD data provided by https://sec.midnightbsd.org

mport audit -r Prints out vulnerable packages and a list of packages depending on that one.

mport -q audit Prints out vulnerable package name and version with no descriptions or details

mport cpe Lists all CPE info on installed packages

mport verify Runs a checksum on all installed files from packages against data from time of installation to see if files have been modified.

Known Bugs

Old versions of mport had a bug that would prevent it working over a serial connection such as during a bhyve installation. A workaround is to ssh into the box to do installs. This is known to impact MidnightBSD 1.2.x and lower. It was fixed.