portmaster best practices

Volodymyr Kostyrko c.kworr at gmail.com
Mon Jan 23 15:10:01 UTC 2012


Victor Sudakov wrote:
> Hello portmaster users,
>
> If portaudit shows that some installed packages have vulnerabilities,
> what do you usually do?

Greatly depend on where am I. All my systems are staying up-to-date 
whereas when I'm visiting someones system I prefer to update only 
required pieces of software. Anyway if you tell portmaster to update 
port x it would try to update all ports it depends on.

> Do you upgrade only the vulnerable packages, or vulnerable packages
> and dependent packages (portmaster -r), or perhaps all packages
> (portmaster -a)? Or do you "pkg_delete -a" all packages first and then
> reinstall from scratch (from `portmaster --list-origins` perhaps)?
>
> I am a bit uneasy about "portmaster -a" because, for example, in the
> output below it intends to install a package which is already
> installed:
>
>
> pg01-sibptus# portmaster -n -a
> ===>>>  Gathering distinfo list for installed ports
>
> [dd]
> 	Upgrade php5-ldap-5.3.5_1 to php5-ldap-5.3.9
> 	Install net/openldap24-sasl-client
> 	Upgrade postgresql-server-9.0.1 to postgresql-server-9.0.6_3
> 	Upgrade tcl-8.5.9 to tcl-8.5.11
> 	Upgrade vim-7.3.81 to vim-7.3.121
> 	Install devel/gettext
>
> ===>>>  Proceed? y/n [y] n
>
> ===>>>  If you would like to upgrade or install some, but not
>         all of the above try adding '-i' to the command line.
> pg01-sibptus#
> pg01-sibptus#
> pg01-sibptus# pkg_info -xo openldap
> Information for openldap-sasl-client-2.4.24:
>
> Origin:
> net/openldap24-client

As far as I recall there was some glitches with correct detection of 
openldap24-client presence (some symbols moving around or so). Generally 
I never pay attention to this glitches and when (or if) update process 
fails I try to recompile mentioned port with portmaster. Then update 
process can be continued with `portmaster -a`.

The better way of debugging such problems for me is pkg_libchk from 
sysutils/bsdadminscripts.

-- 
Sphinx of black quartz judge my vow.


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