Using

• If you want to back up over sshfs:
  • cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-sshfs && make install
  • sshfs user@server.com:/mnt/backshift /mnt/backshift
  • Note that FreeBSD 8.2's sshfs might be a little flakey, tending to give I/O errors it shouldn't. I got around this with:
    • while ! backshift --options; do : ; done
    • In this way, backshift will be retried until it succeeds - IE, until it finishes a backup.
  • In fact, I got a panic while using sshfs on FreeBSD 8.2 - it may be best to stick to NFS for now. The panic was about:
    • unknown: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=155313567
    • g_vfs_done():ad0s1f[WRITE(offset=71874215936, length=16384)]error = 6
    • panic (more here, but my host system flipped to a virtual console before I got the rest down :-S)
  • NFS worked without a hitch.

Building

• cd /usr/ports/shells/bash && make install
• cd /usr/ports/lang/python27 && make install
• cd /usr/ports/lang/python32 && make install # note that this appears to have built CPython 3.1
• cd /usr/ports/devel/subversion && make install
• cd /usr/ports/archivers/gtar && make install
• Comes with xz :)