I had a conversation with a new OpenBSD user who thought that he may have either misunderstood or been misled by the guidance to unpack the ports tree tarball in /usr. He quickly discovered his 2G /usr default allocation was too small when he began to build ports.
FAQ 15 doesn't warn users who selected automatic disk allocation that the default partition size may be inadequate for all but minor ports building. This proposed recommendation adds two sentences which may clarify, following immediately after the untar example. Index: faq15.html =================================================================== RCS file: /cvs/www/faq/faq15.html,v retrieving revision 1.138 diff -u -p -r1.138 faq15.html --- faq15.html 18 Jun 2016 02:24:32 -0000 1.138 +++ faq15.html 19 Jul 2016 01:18:34 -0000 @@ -763,6 +763,15 @@ For example: # <b>tar xzf /tmp/ports.tar.gz</b> </pre></blockquote> +If you installed OpenBSD with automatic disk partition allocations, +<tt>/usr</tt> may be too small to contain the ports tree and +any active <tt>WRKOBJDIR</tt> build directories created in +<tt>/usr/ports/pobj</tt> by default. +A larger <tt>/usr</tt>, a separate <tt>/usr/ports</tt> partition, a +separate <tt>/usr/ports/pobj</tt> partition, or a non-standard +location for <tt>WRKOBJDIR</tt> may be considered. + +<p> If you'd like to be able to write to <tt>/usr/ports</tt> as a regular user, see <a href="#PortsConfig">the next section</a>.
