'cause the ports don't work...

[Erik Norgaard]

craig wrote:
> i've had a good couple of problems installing ports, either because of 
> compilation issues, or because they were just not there.
> is there something i am missing?

You are writing to a community for most of which ports just works, 
please describe what makes your system specific. What is your 
ports-supfile? did you leave out parts you thought you didn't need? How 
can we tell if something is missing when you don't tell what you have?

> zB, i need to install stlport, and a quick search on www.freshports.org 
> shows that it should be as easy as
> pkg_add -r stlport-gcc
> when i try that, however, it fails real quick with a 'unable to fetch' 
> error.

You can fetch the package manually then install with 'pkg_add 
<package>', likewise if fetching the source fails try manually. Maybe it 
fails due to some firewall settings or proxy requirements.

> when that fails, i typically go into the relevant /usr/ports/ directory 
> and go through the make process.
> but for a port whose package failed, more often than not the make 
> process fails too.
> 
> am i missing something?

How can we tell, you haven't included which ports fail, nor any output 
error message.

> i regularly update everything with portupgrade -arR and with cvsup.

upgrading with portupgrade -arR is dangerous and may leave a mess 
behind. the manpage recommends running 'portsdb -Uu' after cvsup and 
before portupgrade and 'pkgdb -F' and 'portsclean -L' after portupgrade. 
failing this may leave some inconsistencies that can cause problems.

Cheers, Erik

-- 
Ph: +34.666334818                                  web: www.locolomo.org
S/MIME Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/2004071206.crt
Subject ID:  A9:76:7A:ED:06:95:2B:8D:48:97:CE:F2:3F:42:C8:F2:22:DE:4C:B9
Fingerprint: 4A:E8:63:38:46:F6:9A:5D:B4:DC:29:41:3F:62:D3:0A:73:25:67:C2