portsnap can't access portsnap[124].freebsd.org

[Scott Bennett]

     I installed 7.2-RELEASE yesterday.  That was my second day's effort on
getting through the anti-intuitive mess of the installer.  I swear if 8.0
doesn't have a considerably better installer, I'll either stay with 7-STABLE
or try to cvsup to 8.0-RELEASE.  I've suffered through the process with 5.2.1,
5.3, 6.1, and now 7.2, and I sure as hell am *not* going to do it again.
     However, 7.2-RELEASE is up and running.  I've csuped to 7-STABLE for
everything except the ports tree.  The ports tree I skipped because I usually
use portsnap instead.  I've made buildworld and a new, somewhat tailored
kernel, installed the new kernel, made installworld, and so on.  This
afternoon I tried to run "portsnap fetch" and ran into a problem.  Although
portsnap[1-4].freebsd.org respond to pings, portsnap says it can't get keys
from portsnap[124].freebsd.org.  (It apparently does not attempt to get them
from portsnap.freebsd.org or portsnap3.freebsd.org.)
     Here's a typescript of what happens.

Script started on Fri May 29 19:33:32 2009
hellas# portsnap fetch
Looking up portsnap.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching public key from portsnap1.FreeBSD.org... failed.
Fetching public key from portsnap2.FreeBSD.org... failed.
Fetching public key from portsnap4.FreeBSD.org... failed.
No mirrors remaining, giving up.
hellas# exit
exit

Script done on Fri May 29 19:33:46 2009

     Can anyone tell me what the problem is?  Is some portsnap service not
operational at freebsd.org currently for some reason?  Is the up-to-date
portsnap trying to reach the wrong systems?
     I've now done most of the other configuration tasks for now and need
to start installing quite a few packages and ports, some of which take quite
a while to build (e.g., the ATLAS library, gdl), so I'd like to get going on
that process, but I'd like them to be up-to-date, including a number of
desktop X/Windomaker applications that are currently missing from my workspace
and all of Robert Noland's frequent fixes to X.org.
     Thanks in advance for any help getting past this obstacle.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
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