pkg_add for 5.2.1 no longer working...

[Darryl L. Miles]

NB: If this request is in the wrong forum please point me off to the 
correct forum or a web resource that may help me, I've tried to find 
both and this forum looks the most suitable.


I have a number of identical FreeBSD boxes that were setup by my hosting 
company through virtually unattended base installs of FreeBSD 5.2.1.  
One of the boxes I sucessfully used the tool pkg_add to install a number 
of packages I require to allow the box to do its job, this was around 1 
to 2 months ago.

I am now trying to run the same procedure to repeat the ports/package 
installs on other boxes.  However they are now failing:

# pkg_add -vr joe
looking up ftp.freebsd.org
connecting to ftp.freebsd.org:21
Error: FTP Unable to get 
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5.2.1-release/Latest/joe.tbz: 
File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
pkg_add: unable to fetch 
'ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5.2.1-release/Latest/joe.tbz' 
by URL
pkg_add: 1 package addition(s) failed


Upon examining the main tree at ftp.freebsd.org all of the files i the 
5.2.1 directory no longer seem to exist, some mirrors across the world 
seem to have the old tree that was there that I saw a few weeks ago.  
That was working well for me.

# ftp -n ftp.freebsd.org
Trying 204.152.184.73...
Connected to ftp.freebsd.org.
220 Welcome to freebsd.isc.org.
ftp> user ftp
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
cd 230-
230-You have reached the freebsd.isc.org FTP server, serving the
230-full FreeBSD FTP archive over IPv4 (204.152.184.73) and IPv6
230-(2001:4f8:0:2::e) networks.  This server is also known as:
230-
230-    ftp.freebsd.org
230-    ftp4.freebsd.org
230-    ftp4.us.freebsd.org
230-
230-This server is operated by Internet Systems Consortium (ISC),
230-on behalf of the FreeBSD Project, with hardware donations from
230-Apple, Intel and Iron Systems.
230-
230-Questions about this service can be sent to: freebsd at isc.org.
230-
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd /pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386
[snip]
ftp> pwd
257 "/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386"
ftp> dir
229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||45509|)
150 Here comes the directory listing.
lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              20 Jul 14  2004 
#cvs.cvsup-37462.728 -> packages-5.1-release
lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              15 Jul 14  2004 packages -> 
packages-stable
drwxrwxr-x   92 110      0            2048 Feb 03 07:18 packages-4-stable
drwxrwxr-x   92 110      0            2048 Oct 25 03:24 
packages-4.10-release
drwxrwxr-x   92 110      0            2048 Jan 25 01:57 
packages-4.11-release
drwxr-xr-x   68 110      0            2048 Nov 15 06:34 packages-5-current
drwxrwxr-x   92 110      0            2048 Feb 12 02:54 packages-5-stable
drwxr-xr-x   92 110      0            2048 Nov 05 00:40 packages-5.3-release
drwxrwxr-x   92 110      0            2048 Feb 14 08:14 packages-6-current
lrwxr-xr-x    1 110      0              18 Oct 20 01:56 packages-current 
-> packages-6-current
lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              17 Jul 15  2004 packages-stable 
-> packages-4-stable
226 Directory send OK.



I'm a complete FreeBSD novice, and have administered a whole variety of 
MSWIN and Linux distributions over the past 13 years and have never hit 
suck a brick wall about a simple issue of installing packages that now 
seem to have vanished from the world.

Is there a reconfiguration process I need to reconfige the pkg_add 
utility to download a new mapping of all the packages.  Are they hidden 
somewhere else ?

I only have command line available on the systems in question, while 
looking through the directories manually with FTP I noticed they aren't 
arranged in a very sociable manner, with 1000s of files in a directory 
alone.  Is there an online web based system to allow me to see whats 
available ?

Perl has an excellent system "perl -MCPAN -e shell" to allow for 
browsing, mirroring and installation of additional packages within the 
perl system.  Wouldn't it be nice if the Free BSD teams were to take a 
leaf out of that book.

At the moment the base Free BSD system is of no practical use to me, 
short of compiling all my own utils by hand.

Any pointers would be much appreciated,

Darryl