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From: Mel Flynn <mel.flynn+fbsd.questions@mailing.thruhere.net>
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Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 08:39:38 -0900
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Cc: Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com>,
	Arthur Barlow <arthurbarlow@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Packages vs Ports
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On Wednesday 23 December 2009 08:13:21 Adam Vande More wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Arthur Barlow 
<arthurbarlow@gmail.com>wrote:

> > P.S. I'm using FreeBSD 7.2 on an old Gateway Pentium III machine with a
> > 40G harddrive.
> 
> pkg's are created at the time of release eg 7.2.  They are never updated
>  for that release.

Or set PACKAGESITE to:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7-stable/Latest/

See pkg_add(1) for details.
This will usually work for legacy stable branches, but you may actually need 
to update your system to a more recent stable version once in a while.
-- 
Mel