Re: Corrupted pkg db. Recoverable?

From: Steve Rikli <sr_at_genyosha.net>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 02:23:22 UTC
On Sat, Mar 15, 2025 at 01:45:50AM +0000, Jonathan Adams wrote:
> Hi all,
>   I'm running 14.2-RELEASE-p2 with packages pulled from latest in Qemu running within Termux on an Android device. (I guess I like to create interesting challenges!)
> 
>   I recently ran `pkg upgrade`, then selected 'n' to cancel. (Too many packages.) Moments later, I decided to upgrade Vim only, and got this:
> 
> # pkg install vim
> Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> repository FreeBSD has no meta file, using default settings
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> pkg: An error occured while fetching package: No error
> Unable to update repository FreeBSD
> Error updating repositories!
> 
>   I'm now unable to install|upgrade packages, though I can do `pkg delete <pkg>` and `pkg autoremove` just fine.
>   Is there a way to rebuild the pkg db, or in any way recover the ability to install|upgrade packages? I have backups of the drive images from before I updated to p2, but I'd like to try to fix the current install first.

Check your system for /var/backups/pkg.sql.xz file(s).

The pkg(8) man page has an example for restoring a backup pkg database.

Cheers,
sr.