Problems building Mysql55-server port (no suitable checksum found)

[Mike Meyer]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 09:01:30 +0100
Olaf Greve <ogreve at millennics.com> wrote:

> Hi Mike,
> 
> Thanks for your excellent reply!
> 
> >You got it with the last one. Your system is too outdated to run a
> >current ports tree. FeeBSD 5.4 was EOL'd in 2006, and 5.5 in 2008.
> >You'll should probably update to a supported version of FreeBSD
> >(meaning *at least* 7.3). Alternatively, try checking out a five-year
> >old copy of the ports tree and building with that - but that's *still*
> >unsupported software.
> 
> Aye, I hear you! No, I'm not going to 'patch it in place' using an old ports tree. There's nothing of vital importance on the machine, so I can either go two ways:
> 1) Upgrade the system.
> 2) Do a clean install.

Well, I understand there's now a binary upgrade path - but you'd have
to update your kernconf and rebuild your kernel, and if that kernel is
required to talk to part of the system, then you may be stuck.

Updating from source is possible, but I don't think skipping releases
is recommended, so you'd wind up needing to do multiple updates.

But let's look at this:

> If a good update mechanism exists that leaves my Sendmail, SVN, Trac, and some other installations in place, that could be preferrable...
> Do you know if there are any good guides for this, or is this perhaps a route that I'd better not take?

Assuming those are all equally old, there's a fair chance your current
configs won't work if you update to current versions of that software
anyway. You can run the old versions by installing all the appropriate
misc/compat?x ports, but it was wanting to update one of those that
started this.

Because of things like these, I'm a big fan of doing clean installs.
I do them when changing major version. But I do it by dual-booting the
system during the process. I'll detach a disk from the root RAID or
mirror, install on it, and then rebuild & config things with the old
system mounted for reference. This might take a couple of days on
production systems, since I have to do this work after hours,
rebooting the production system during the day. I then put the new
system in production and let the users shake it out before putting the
RAID back together based on the new install.

     <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Software developer/SCM consultant, email for more information.

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