pkg_version: the package info for package '...' is corrupt

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

[[ I asked about this problem on the -questions list a couple of days
   ago, but didn't get any relevant replies, so I'm trying again here
   on the -ports list.  Apologies if you see this twice.  ]]

A couple of days ago my system just simply decided to power itself off
(twice) whilst I was in the middle of doing "portupgrade -a".

I have since learned that the unscheduled and unexpected power offs
were due to a CPU cooling problem.  I believe that I have that problem
in hand now.

Separately however, and probably as result of the sudden power offs,
when I run pkg_version now I am getting many messages relating to
various of my installed packages, all having the following general
form:

   pkg_version: the package info for package 'PKG' is corrupt

where `PKG' is the name of some package or another that I have installed.

I have at least 6 such messages for different packages I have installed...
and probably more.

I googled around a bit and did not find any good explanation for the
above error or, more importantly, what to do about it.

I gather however that my package data base has become corrupted.

OK, so how does one rebuild that from scratch?

Please don't tell me that I have to reinstall every bleedin' port from
scratch!


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Oh!  And by the way, I just happen to have made a full system backup
quite recently.  Do I just simply need to get the entire contents of
/var/db/pkg/ from that backup, and then do "rm -fr /var/db/pkg" and then
copy my backup copy of /var/db/pkg to the real /var/db/pkg ?

Will that fix the problem?