# Quick question about portmaster.



## tmpdmp (Jun 18, 2019)

I was using Portmaster to install www/firefox however the port failed to install when pulseaudio didn't build and said "update failed".  My question is: instead of trying to use portmaster again to start compiling firefox where it left off (as it always says update failed when I try), can I have portmaster start over from the beginning and download everything again and ask me those blue screen default settings like it does the first time? Is there a command or process to deal with failed portmaster installations?

Thanks.


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## SirDice (Jun 18, 2019)

I suggest you use packages.


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## Minbari (Jun 18, 2019)

You can choose to install/run www/firefox without audio/pulseaudio, just with alsa or sndio as a backend. This way I run www/firefox on my FreeBSD machine and it's works great. The only thing you need to do is to remove the old firefox port config then start over (cd /usr/ports/www/firefox && make rmconfig).


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## ShelLuser (Jun 18, 2019)

tmpdmp said:


> My question is: instead of trying to use portmaster again to start compiling firefox where it left off (as it always says update failed when I try), can I have portmaster start over from the beginning and download everything again and ask me those blue screen default settings like it does the first time?


First I'd like to mention that I definitely agree with SirDice that packages (so: `# pkg install firefox`) might be the better approach, generally speaking.

Having said that:

`# cd /usr/ports/www/firefox`
`# make fetch-recursive`
`# portmaster www/firefox`
And done. Of course you can also use the --always-fetch parameter for Portmaster, but I personally prefer the above method. Alas, see also ports(7) for a list of useful build targets as well as portmaster(8) for a list of useful Portmaster options.


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## scottro (Jun 18, 2019)

To answer the original question, you would do cd /usr/ports/www/firefox and as root or with root privilege
`make config`
Which gives you the blue dialog box.


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## SirDice (Jun 18, 2019)

From portmaster(8):

```
--force-config
	 run 'make config' for all ports (overrides -G)
```


```
[-R] -f
	 always	rebuild	ports (overrides -i)
```

Use pkg-autoremove(8) to remove the now orphaned dependencies that got built.


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## zirias@ (Jun 18, 2019)

This might be a matter of taste, but IMHO, _if_ you want to build all the ports you'll use yourself, better use ports-mgmt/poudriere instead of portmaster -- I found it much better to manage.

If you only want to build a few ports yourself, I tend to do this directly from the ports tree, without any additional tool, and install dependencies with `pkg` beforehand. Be warned that you have to be careful when mixing official packages with custom-build ports:

you should only do this for a few selected "leaf ports" (without anything else depending on them)
you should probably use the "latest" pkg repository, so it matches your up-to-date ports tree
If that's what you want to try, you might be interested in ports-mgmt/synth that provides some automation for that, but I never used it myself, so I can't tell how well it works.


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