Automated installation from ports

Building software from ports takes quite a lot of time, especially when using bulky programs like ImageMagick or Apache. For example, if you install ImageMagick you will notice that this program has a lot of dependencies. Dependencies are programs which need to be installed before ImageMagick can be installed; ImageMagick can't work without them. The hardest thing about installing ImageMagick is that you need to be in the vicinity of the computer to confirm the installation of each dependent program. Installation will be delayed until you click "OK" to confirm the installation of every dependent program (by this action you confirm options of the current program). (source)

I could not say it better.

The article is useful, but, as for me, the best was the Dola Marco's comment, which suggested to run:

# make config-recursive
# make -DBATCH install clean

I have tried it and it worked. I ran those commands against Xorg and it was successfully installed while I slept. Cool!

I suppose, starting from today, it will be the only installation method at all for me.

Best regards.

P.S. There is some additional information about ports configuration. It is in Russian.

pw: user 'messagebus' disappeared during update

Hello.

During dbus installation from ports, I got:

pw: user 'messagebus' disappeared during update

 The interesting thing is that after restarting the installation I got the following:

>Description: /usr/ports/devel/dbus fails if an existing messagebus user is found

===> Creating users and/or groups.
Using existing group `messagebus'.
Creating user `messagebus' with uid `556'.
pw: user 'messagebus' already exists
*** Error code 74

Stop in /usr/ports/devel/dbus.
*** Error code 1

And:

# pw useradd messagebus
pw: user 'messagebus' already exists
# pw usershow messagebus
pw: no such user `messagebus'
# pw userdel messagebus
pw: no such user `messagebus'

The user exists and does not exist in no time, heh.

The solution was found here:

1. run vipw
2. save /etc/passwd without changes

It looks like for some reasons the passwd database was corrupted. And vipw reset's it to normal state.

After doing that, 'pw userdel' completed successfully. And as the result, port has been installed successfully too.

Profit \^__^/

Guys, than you for your advise. It was very helpful. And I hope that post will be handy too.