Hi everyone,

As I got further into configuring my sample VM, I decided it would make sense to provide a few different VM flavors for folks who don’t want to configure Apache, PHP, and other ports to get the PHP frameworks installed and working.

I’ve set up a BitTorrent tracker at http://torrents.sourcehosting.net:10692/, and I’ll place the various VMs there from now on. The installation process is as follows:

• Download and install a BitTorrent client, if you don’t already have one. I recommend Azureus.
• Grab the UsrPorts torrent.
• Grab a FreeBSD 6.2 Basic Installation torrent, such as the Bare Bones VM, or the VM pre-configured with Apache. Check the main tracker site for other options, and view the torrent info page to find out what ports have been preinstalled.
• Once the UsrPorts.zip file has been fetched by your BitTorrent client, extract the contents to a new directory.
• Extract your selected FreeBSD 6.2 VM .zip file to the same directory and start up the VM with VMware Player or VMware Server.

The UsrPorts.zip file contains the /usr/ports filesystem that’s mounted in the VM. Since this filesystem is typically kept up to date by running portsnap while the VM is running, I’ve provided an initial snapshot for you, but it’s not necessary to keep re-downloading when I provide a new FreeBSD VM that you’d like to try out.

I hope this system works better for folks, and please consider seeding the torrents as you download the .zip files.

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC