pkg_add is a FreeBSD tool for installing packages, much like Linux’s apt-get and other tools. When you run it you can use the -r option to fetch a package, for example:
pkg_add -v -r zip
When you do this, you’ll see it going off to download from one of the main FreeBSD servers, which can often be far away from you and a lot slower. If you’d like to download locally set the PACKAGEROOT environment variable to the server you’d like to use. For example:
export PACKAGEROOT=ftp://ftp.za.freebsd.org
“za” is the country code for South Africa. Most countries have local mirrors, and there are lists online. For example, “uk” or “au” would be for the UK or Australia.
