Help please... Upgrade to pkg no workie

[Matthew Seaman]

On 25/04/2017 22:34, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> 
> This is rather embarassing, but OK, I confess... One of my
> systems here is running the ancient FreeBSD 9.1 and it hasn't
> been upgraded in a long long time.  Like not at all.  No package
> updates, nothing.  Today however I desperately need to upgrade
> the installed Perl.  (Apparently, the Perl that I have installed
> on this system, v5.16, has an old and not at all up-to-date Unicode
> implementation.)

Given how many packages you tend to have that depend on perl, in this
situation my advice would be to punt on this system entirely, and build
a new 11.0 setup to fulfil the same functions.  Even if you have to buy
a new hard drive to install the 11.0 system on within the same chassis.

> As you all know, fBSD 9.1 used the older package system.  I am well and
> truly aware of the fact that, in order to move forward, I will need
> to upgrade to the new package system (pkg).  So I've been reading this
> page that purports to give directions on exactly how to do that:

It's not just pkg that you're going to have problems with when running
such an old system.  The ports tree hasn't supported FreeBSD 9.x since
9.3-RELEASE went out of support at the end of December, and lots of
compatibility hacks have since been dyked out.

>      https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/pkgng-intro.html
> 
> Unfortunately, for me at least, the guidance here raises nearly
> as many questions as it answers.  For example, it says to do these
> two things:
> 
>      1)  Run pkg2ng.

This converts the existing pkg_tools /var/db/pkg into the package
database used by pkg(8)

>      2)  Put a line like "WITH_PKGNG=yes" into /etc/make.conf

This tells the ports to use pkg(8) rather than pkg_tools.  I'm not sure
if this variable still does anything with a current ports tree -- pkg(8)
is assumed nowadays.

Even so, both of these steps should be taken before trying to use the
ports with pkg(8), but it doesn't really matter what order you do them in.

> What it doesn't say is whether the first thing must be done strictly
> *before* the second thing, or vise versa, or if the order here even
> matters at all.  (I don't want to totally screw up my system, so in
> the absence of complete clarity, and since I don't really know exactly
> what the effects of either of these two steps really are, I am inclined
> to proceed with great caution and thus requast clarification from this
> list.)
> 
> Anyway, I decided to look and see if perchance I might already have
> the new & improved pkg command on my system.  So I did "which pkg"
> and lo and behold, an executable with that name is already present
> on this system as /usr/sbin/pkg.  (I have no clear recollection, one
> way or the other, whether or not, in years past, I may have deliberately
> installed this /usr/sbin/pkg or not.)

/usr/sbin/pkg is pkg(7).  It's a small shim that serves to download and
install the up-to-date pkg(8).  Which isn't going to work, as there
isn't a FreeBSD-9.x version of pkg(8) or even a FreeBSD-9.x package repo
available today.

> Anyway, I decided to throw the dice and run this, with no options or
> arguments, just to see if that would give me a list of command line
> options or what.  I was almost immediately greeted with a message
> saying that the new pkg system was *not* in fact actually installed
> and asking me ([y/N]) if I wanted to install it.  I control-C'd out
> of this, before I did any damage, and plotted my next move.
> 
> I realized that to actually install this thing, I'd probably need to be
> root, so I su'd to root and then cd'd to ~root and started "script" so
> that I'd have a full log in case anything went wrong... which it
> promptly did.  Here's the log.  It isn't pretty.
> 
> ==============================================================================
> root at segfault:/root # pkg
> The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
> Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]: y
> Bootstrapping pkg please wait
> Installing pkg-1.9.4_1...
> pkg-static: dup2(rootfd): Invalid argument
> Extracting pkg-1.9.4_1:   0%
> pkg-static: Fail to create /usr: Bad file descriptor
> Extracting pkg-1.9.4_1: 100%
> 
> Failed to install the following 1 package(s): /tmp//pkg.txz.q9abRX
> root at segfault:/root # exit
> ==============================================================================
> 
> So?  NOW what should I do?

What you would need to do is build pkg from source via the
ports-mgmt/pkg port

> Any & all advice appreciated.
> 
> (I still desperately need to get Perl upgraded.)

Like I said, in the end you'll find it a lot easier and more productive
to start from a fresh install on a blank system and recreate the
functionality of your server from scratch.

	Cheers,

	Matthew


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