Malformed conditional when trying to make

[Ricky Huang]

Hello all,

In light of the recent shell shock exploit, I have started patching/update some old systems I own, with "portsnap fetch extract update" command.  There is a machine running "FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE-p3" that throws a "malformed conditional" error whenever I try to make.  A snippet of the error is as follows:
> 
> Unknown modifier 't'
> 
> "Makefile", line 57: Malformed conditional (${PORT_OPTIONS:MSTATIC} || defined(NO_DYNAMICROOT) || (defined(NOSHARED) && ${NOSHARED:tl} != "no"))
> "Makefile", line 61: if-less else
> "Makefile", line 64: if-less endif
> Unknown modifier 't'
> 
> Unknown modifier 't'

I looked up the "releases" section on FreeBSD.org, https://www.freebsd.org/releases/#prior-unsupported, and it shows 9.0 as unsupported.  Fine.  But what I do not understand is why does it allowed my old, unsupported machine to pull from a reposition that it cannot possibly compile?  Shouldn't it stop at the last compile'able rev?

Anyways, I know the box is old and should be upgraded anyways.  So being a FreeBSD noob, what would be the best way to do an in-place upgrade of the system?  There are stuff on the server that I want to keep and a wipe-reinstall is not highly desirable.  Is the update command "freebsd-update"?  Also are there any gotchas that I should look out for?


Thanks for reading.