702-100 Leak Questions

The ports collection on FreeBSD is a package management system that allows users to install third-party software from source or binary packages. The ports collection is stored in the /usr/ports/ directory, which contains subdirectories for different categories of software, such as archivers, databases, editors, etc. Each subdirectory contains one or more ports, which are directories that contain the files needed to build and install the software. The /usr/ports/ directory can be updated with the portsnap command34

Binary packages are pre-compiled versions of the ports that can be installed with the pkg command. Binary packages are downloaded from the FreeBSD package repository,which is hosted at pkg.freebsd.org. The packages are installed in the /usr/local/ directory by default, and the information about the installed packages is stored in the /usr/local/pkg/ directory. The /usr/local/pkg/ directory contains files with the .db extension, which are SQLite databases that store the metadata of the packages. The pkg command can query and manipulate these databases56 References: 3: 4: 5: 6: &sektion=8

The file /etc/rc.conf contains values for Management Information Bases (MIBs) which are set during system startup. This file is used to configure system-wide settings, including the enabling and disabling of services, network settings, and other startup configurations2.

References:

• FreeBSD Handbook - The FreeBSD Booting Process

The cron job syntax consists of five fields that specify the time and date of execution, followed by the command or script to run. The fields are: minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. Each field can have a specific value, a range, a list, a wildcard (), or a step value. The wildcard () means any possible value for that field. The option B sets the minute field to 0 and the hour field to *, which means the script will run at the 0th minute of every hour, regardless of the day, month, or weekday. This is equivalent to once per hour. The other options are either invalid syntax or do not match the desired frequency. For example, option A sets all fields to *, which means the script will run every minute of every hour of every day, month, and weekday. Option C sets the minute field to * and the hour field to 0, which means the script will run every minute of the 0th hour, or once per day at midnight. Option D has a typo (o instead of *) and option E sets the day of month field to o, which is not a valid value. References:

• crontab - FreeBSD crontab(5) Manual Page1
• Crontab Explained in Linux [With Examples] - Linux Handbook2

The -e option of the crontab command opens the current user’s crontab in an editor. The editor used is determined by the environment variables VISUAL or EDITOR. If neither of these variables is set, the default editor is vi. The user can edit the crontab file to add, modify, or delete cron jobs, which are scheduled commands or scripts that run at a specified time or interval. The crontab file has the following format:

minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week command

Each field can be a number, a range, a list, or an asterisk (*), which means all possible values. The command can be any valid shell command or script. For example, the following crontab entry runs the backup.sh script every day at 2:30 AM:

30 2 * * * /home/user/backup.sh

To save and install the crontab file, the user needs to exit the editor. The crontab command will check the syntax of the file and report any errors. If the file is valid, it will be installed and the cron daemon will execute the cron jobs according to the schedule. References:

• crontab(1) - Linux manual page
• FreeBSD Handbook: 11.6. Scheduling Tasks