reason 23 why we've moved to linux

[Randy Bush]

> Honest question, have you been building things from source under 
> debian's ports or are you using their version of "pkg"?

the latter

and i have two 9 systems where i try to use freebsd-update.  also a
time-consuming rabbit hole leading nowhere pleasant.  e.g.

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.2-RELEASE-p3
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
kernel/generic world/base world/doc world/games world/lib32

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE-p3 from update5.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE-p3 from update2.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE-p3 from update3.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE-p3 from update4.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.2-RELEASE-p3 from update6.freebsd.org... failed.
No mirrors remaining, giving up.

randy