freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 174, Issue 15

[Adam J Richardson]

> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:51:58 -0500
> From: Drew Sanford <lauasanf at wilderness.homeip.net>
> Subject: portupgrade failing, portsdb error
> To: questions at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <4628E19E.405 at wilderness.homeip.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> I get the following error:
> 
> root at drew(/usr/ports)# portupgrade gnome-vfs
> [Updating the portsdb <format:bdb_btree> in /usr/ports ... - 16885 port 
> entries found 
> .........1000.........2000.........3000.........4000.........5000.........6000.........7000.........8000.........9000.........10000.........11000.........12000.........13000.........14000.........15000.........16000........ 
> ..... done]
> [missing key: categories] [Updating the portsdb <format:bdb_btree> in 
> /usr/ports ... - 16885 port entries found 
> .........1000.........2000.........3000.........4000.........5000.........6000.........7000.........8000.........9000.........10000.........11000.........12000.........13000.........14000.........15000.........16000........ 
> ..... done]
> missing key: categories: Cannot read the portsdb!
<snip ruby errors>

Hi Drew,

I've had this and the cause in my case was that portupgrade is out of 
date. In February the ports tree maintainers moved portupgrade from 
sysutils to ports-mgmt. That's the cause of "missing key: categories".

Anyway, do this and see if it fixes the problem:

cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade
make all install clean

Hope this helps,
Adam J Richardson