1. Download the PHP source package:

   wget 'http://www.php.net:8000/distributions/php-4.0.6.tar.gz'

2. Extract the sources:

   tar xvfz php-4.0.6.tar.gz

   And cd to the php-4.0.6 directory.

3. Configure PHP:

   ./configure --with-apxs --with-mysql=/usr/local \
--with-config-file-path=/var/www/conf --disable-xml \
--disable-pear --enable-bcmath --enable-magic-quotes

   Leave out the --with-mysql=/usr/local option if you don’t want MySQL support or MySQL is not installed.

4. Compile PHP:

   make > /dev/null

5. Stop Apache:

   /usr/sbin/apachectl stop

6. Install the PHP module:

   make install

   or copy the libphp4.so.0.0 in the .libs/ directly to/usr/lib/apache/modules/libphp4.so if you like that better (-:

7. Edit /var/www/conf/httpd.conf:

   Make sure that the following line is present and commented out:

   LoadModule php4_module /usr/lib/apache/modules/libphp4.so

   Search for “#AddType application/x-httpd-php .php” and remove the # in front of it, thereby telling Apache the line isn’t a comment anymore.

   I added also the .php3 extenstion to it, so files ending in .php3 are also processed by the PHP engine. The end result:

   AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3

8. Start Apache:

   /usr/sbin/apachectl start

Packages are the binary equivalent of the ports, prebuilt by the OpenBSD team for your convenience. Though there are far less prebuilt packages than there are ports available through the ports system in /usr/ports.

Installation of a package

If you don’t have them stored locally, packages can be found online in a directory on a FTP mirror site. Something like ftp-site/pub/OpenBSD/2.8/packages/i386/ for instance.

Installation from harddisk:

pkg_add tcsh-6.09.00.tgz

Of course, you could also install via the internet:

pkg_add ftp://ftp-site/url/tcsh-6.09.00-static.tgz

Ports are third party software which haven’t had the thorough security audit as the native OpenBSD programs have had. The ports collection is installed on your disk as a large tree of directories representing the various programs with in them a Makefile which specifies the information needed to install a particular port.

Installation of a program in /usr/ports:

1. Retrieve /pub/OpenBSD/2.8/ports.tar.gz from the nearest OpenBSD mirror.
2. Install with:
   cd /usr ; tar xvfz /tmp/ports.tar.gz
3. Then cd to the directory of port you’d like to install.
4. Run make as user root and the source tarball retrieval, unpacking, configuration and compilation processes start automagically
5. Run make install as user root to install the package.
6. Afterwards, a .tgz binary package of the software you just compiled and installed can be found in /usr/ports/packages/arch/ which you can use to speed up the installation process on other machines for instance.

Install CVSup:
pkg_add cvsup-16.1g-no_x11.tgz
The “no_x11″ means that the cvsup program will be text-only. That’s fine.

Create a directory where CVSup’s configuration files and its bookkeeping data directory will be placed:
mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/cvsup

Create /usr/local/etc/cvsup/stable-supfile. This file will be used to tell CVSup to download all OpenBSD source code for the stable release branch you’re interested in, except for the x11, xf4 (both XFree86 related), www files and ports. In other words: everything that is needed in order to rebuild OpenBSD from source (located in /usr/src. We’re not interested in XFree86 for a server system, so we will skip it.

Working example stable-supfile:

*default host=cvsup.ca.openbsd.org
*default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=OPENBSD_3_4
*default delete use-rel-suffix

*default compress

#OpenBSD-all
OpenBSD-src
#OpenBSD-www
#OpenBSD-ports
#OpenBSD-x11
#OpenBSD-xf4

Create /usr/local/etc/cvsup/ports-supfile. This file will be used to tell CVSup to download the complete OpenBSD ports collection for the stable release branch you’re interested in, except for the x11, xf4 (both XFree86 related), www files and OpenBSD source code. In other words: everything that is needed in order to use the ports system (located in /usr/ports).
Working example ports-supfile:

*default host=cvsup.ca.openbsd.org
*default base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=OPENBSD_3_4
*default delete use-rel-suffix

*default compress

#OpenBSD-all
#OpenBSD-src
#OpenBSD-www
OpenBSD-ports
#OpenBSD-x11
#OpenBSD-xf4

You probably want to change the “default host” in stable-supfile and ports-supfile to some CVSup server nearest to you. Check out this list of CVSup servers to search for one.

For checking out releases newer than OpenBSD 3.4 you must edit the “tag” in stable-supfile to reflect the version you’re interested in. For updates to the ports collection for OpenBSD 3.4 you must do the same. In order to allways download the latest ports, you must set the “tag” to a single dot (.).