Setting X11BASE

Paul Schmehl pauls at utdallas.edu
Sun May 20 21:29:33 UTC 2007


--On May 20, 2007 4:24:15 PM -0400 Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> 
wrote:
>> >
>> I'm in the same situation, with several headless servers with no X
>> running  but xorg-libraries installed as a dependency.
>>
>> I tried running portupgrade -ai on one server.  It failed.
>>
>> I ran pkgdb -L and fixed a tons of dependencies by installing the new
>> xorg  7.2 ports.  Then I ran portupgrade -ai again.  This time it
>> upgraded  xorg-libraries from 6.9 to 7.2, and the only failures were
>> related to php4  (which was held up by the port freeze and needs a
>> security update, which  should be released shortly.)
>>
>> I'm not sure what to do next.  I put X11BASE=${LOCALBASE} in
>> /etc/make.conf, and I ran mergebase.sh.  Is there anything else that I
>> need to do?
>
> Following directions is considered too hard?  If you're going to do
> things in some random order you came up with on your own (instead of
> following the careful, precise directions provided in UPDATING) then I
> don't have a lot of patience for helping you recover your damaged
> system.  Good luck :-)
>
Maybe you should take a chill pill, Kris.  I know you've been working very 
hard on this upgrade, and it appears you've gotten cranky.

First of all, my system is working fine.  Secondly, I *did* read the 
directions - several times.  Then I brought up a second terminal so I 
could have the directions in front of me while I tried the upgrade.  But 
this is not a system that runs Xorg or any graphical display at all.  The 
upgrade, as written in UPDATING didn't work for me.  Maybe it will work on 
the next server I run it on.  Maybe not.  Maybe I'm an idiot and can't 
read English.  The point of my post was that I was able to fix the problem 
by running pkgdb -L, which "fixed" all the missing dependencies because 
xorg has been "split" into all sorts of pieces.

It would be nice if every port that you use on a headless system didn't 
require xorg libraries, but I suppose that's unrealistic.

If you can show me where the instructions are for UPDATING a headless 
server that's not running xorg at all but has some xorg libraries as 
dependencies to other ports, I'd be happy to follow those instructions 
instead.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I am *very* thankful that there are 
many people willing to volunteer to help make FreeBSD what it is.  (My 
favorite OS, BTW.)  I myself maintain several ports, so I have a small 
inkling of what it's like to do all this work.  I'm not complaining.  I 
was simply answering the OP's question about what he should do regarding a 
headless server without X if the upgrade fails.

Getting back to my question, however, I have run portupgrade and 
everything is up to date (except php4, but we know why), I ran mergebase 
and I added X11BASE=${LOCALBASE} to /etc/make.conf.  The system is working 
fine.  /usr/X11R6 is a symlink to /usr/local.

Is there anything else that I need to do?  Or am I done?  I think I'm 
done, but I defer to the experts.

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/


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