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Chapter 3The pkg_delete(1) needs the exact name of the installed package includingthe version number. You can find the exact name of the installed package usingpkg_info(1) utility. However, to make your life easier, you can use the -x argumentwhich treats the given package name parameter as a regular expression, and deletesall the packages that match the expression. This would obviously be dangerous.So use of the -i argument to prompt for your input, before actually removinganything, is highly recommended.When the packages are installed, they are registered on the packages database. Youcan look through the registered package database using the pkg_info(1) utility.Using the pkg_info utility, you can see a complete list of all the installed packages,and also search in the database using regular expressions. The most popular usage ofpkg_info is, grepping its output to find out whether a package is installed or not:# pkg_info | grep -i sslopenssl-0.9.8e SSL and crypto libraryphp5-openssl-5.2.1_3 The openssl shared extension for phpPortsUnlike the packages that come in a precompiled binary form, ports are a set ofmetafiles that describe how a specific application should be built for FreeBSD. In fact,packages are built from ports.A port contains instructions needed to download, patch, compile, and installaccording to the FreeBSD's guidelines. Using the ports system, the systemadministrator does not need to worry about the specific build issues anddependencies for each application.Besides, the user can specify build-time options to customize the application. Thismay include adding or removing features, as well as compiler options for yourspecific hardware.The ports collection is a set of directories and files located under /usr/ports. Thereare several categories listed under the ports collection. Each of them contains anumber of ports related to that category.If there is no ports collection in /usr/ports, you probably haven'tinstalled the collection during installation. Please refer to Chapter 2,System Configuration—Keeping it Updated, for more information aboutupdating the local ports collection repository using cvsup.A category is a directory that contains several ports that are directories themselves.For example, sjitter is located under net-mgmt/sjitter.[ 51 ]