From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 5 02:35:26 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D141416A4CE for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 02:35:26 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail06.syd.optusnet.com.au (mail06.syd.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.187]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4117943D55 for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 02:35:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from syncman@optusnet.com.au) Received: from [192.168.0.7] (c211-30-63-111.belrs1.nsw.optusnet.com.au [211.30.63.111]) (authenticated bits=0)j052ZOZA019581 for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:35:25 +1100 Message-ID: <41DBEDD4.7050505@optusnet.com.au> Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 13:38:28 +0000 From: Andrew Sinclair User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20041016 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <41DA0AB8.3080400@centtech.com> <41DABE72.2000501@optusnet.com.au> <20050104205643.GC13991@xor.obsecurity.org> In-Reply-To: <20050104205643.GC13991@xor.obsecurity.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: portupgrade system destruction? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 02:35:26 -0000 Kris Kennaway wrote: >On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 04:04:02PM +0000, Andrew Sinclair wrote: > > > >>Portupgrade makes a mess at the best of times. A recursive portupgrade >>is not so clever about dependencies, particually on a live system. On >>occasion, it even seems to tamper with core libraries which is what >>would have occured in your case. >> >> > >Can you provide some evidence of these claims? I'm suspicious :-) > >Kris > No, I can only tell you that I tried it, and stopped using it some time ago because of similar problems. Keep in mind I said, "seems to tamper with." I had an issue where some kind of linux centric library (not libc-client) was no longer available and several system utilities refused to start up. I tried reinstalling linux_base but that didn't fix it. Turned out it was a subtle change in the ports collection that required a little more than a [cvsup; portupgrade] to fix. On previous occasions, it attempted to upgrade 10x as many ports & dependencies as I wanted. It was more work than a manual deinstall, cvsup, reinstall. I came to the conclusion that automated tools are a poor excuse for not reading /usr/ports/UPDATING ;-) I usually research these problems before I say anything but figuring that Mr Anderson required immediate assistance, I risked using the infamous Ass-U-Me technique to speculate about the problem. Had I have known you'd be on his case the same day, I would not have said anything. By the way, sorry if I offended you with the, "with all due respect," quip Eric. I wasn't sure how to write that in a way that didn't seem offensive. :-)