# Portsnap & Refuse Option



## Mayhem30 (Jul 28, 2018)

Is it safe to uncomment the 2 REFUSE lines in /etc/portsnap.conf? I'm pretty sure I have nothing installed that requires those languages.

```
# REFUSE arabic chinese french german hebrew hungarian japanese
# REFUSE korean polish portuguese russian ukrainian vietnamese
```
If I were to do that, would I just need to do a rm -rf /usr/ports/ and then `portsnap fetch extract`?


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## rigoletto@ (Jul 28, 2018)

I don't use portsnap(8) and don't have it installed to consult the file but `REFUSE` in there apparently actually means refuse. So, it should be safe but why remove those categories?

I mean this is the kind of thing that bring very little advantage ( they use very little space ) to do, and later something may break because something depends on a port in those categories ( and you don't know ), and you get crazy trying to fix it because you forgot you removed those categories like two years ago.


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## ShelLuser (Jul 28, 2018)

"If it isn't broke, don't try to fix it".


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## Mayhem30 (Jul 28, 2018)

Why not?

More importantly, why is that option even available in the config file if it makes no difference?


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## rigoletto@ (Jul 28, 2018)

Nobody said it makes no difference, but the difference is mostly irrelevant...

There are situations when every minimal difference is a big difference, think about the enormous difference 1MB do in tiny embedded systems. Now 1MB on 99% of desktops/laptops is almost completely irrelevant and often does not worth the effort to maintain the customization to get rid of it, ever if that effort is minimal.


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## DeadLoco (Jul 30, 2018)

lebarondemerde said:


> I don't use portsnap(8) and don't have it installed


But you have it bundled with `/usr/sbin`. Every FreeBSD installed from the official media - ISO/IMG/FTP/etc - has the `portsnap` inside.


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## DeadLoco (Jul 30, 2018)

Mayhem30 said:


> Is it safe to uncomment the 2 REFUSE lines


Yep, it is. Mostly they are so-called `metaports` that modifies an options of the mainstream ports - adds the national fonts to the dependencies lists, f.e. But there is no reasons to refuse them as far as they very tiny against the whole tree. Literally no difference.


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## ShelLuser (Jul 30, 2018)

DeadLoco said:


> But you have it bundled with `/usr/sbin`. Every FreeBSD installed from the official media - ISO/IMG/FTP/etc - has the `portsnap` inside.


So why assume he installed it from official media? Many of us here customize our setup (read: build from source) so that it better suits our needs. And if you then look at src.conf(5) you'll see this:

```
WITHOUT_PORTSNAP
             Set to not build or install portsnap(8) and related files.
```
So it really isn't all that weird that lebarondemerde doesn't have portsnap installed.

In fact, I can somewhat follow up on that as well. Although my servers do have Portsnap installed all of them lack freebsd-update, ppp, svnlite, autofs, floppy support, bluetooth support and wireless support (and some other stuff I don't recall from mind).

That's the advantage of building from source; no unneeded overhead


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