problems with fetch

[Kevin Kinsey]

Christopher Hobbs wrote:

> I'm a first time poster, so forgive me if this is the wrong list or if I break
> etiquette.

Seems proper enough to me, here.

> Fetch frequently fails for me when installing ports via "pkg_add" or directly
> from the ports tree.  Regardless of the port I'm trying to add, it almost always
> returns the following...
> 
> => Attempting to fetch from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/.
> fetch: ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/xpdf-3.01pl1.patch:
> Syntax error in parameters or arguments
> => Couldn't fetch it - please try to retrieve this
> => port manually into /usr/ports/distfiles/ and try again.
> *** Error code 1
>  
> I think the key error in all of this is the part that says "Syntax error in
> parameters or arguments".  This only seems to happen with FTP sites as opposed
> to HTTP sites.  

Understandable, as this message is either an SMTP or FTP error code,
but not an HTTP one.  (We'll guess FTP in this case, methinks...) ;)

I can retrieve said files with wget without a hitch, so I'm at a
> loss as to what's going on.  I've frobbed nearly every knob that fetch has to no
> avail.

Hmm, that's kind of interesting.

> I'm running 6.1:  FreeBSD SS002.admin.siloamsprings.com 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD
> 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sun May  7 04:42:56 UTC 2006    
> root at opus.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  i386
> 
> It's a fresh install, I'll probably update soon.  I had the same problem in 5.4.
>  
> Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to provide!
> 

Are you behind an FTP proxy? (Seems strange to get that message, but
it's worth asking about.)  What about a firewall (on 2d though, forget
that, you couldn't get the message from the server otherwise.

What do these commands yield?

	locale
	alias | grep -i fet
	alias | grep -i get
	env | grep -i fet
	env | grep -i get
	file `which fetch`
	grep fetch /etc/make.conf

Are you able to use the ftp client manually and d-load the files?

In a pinch, there are also some workarounds.  You could try "alias fetch 
wget -c", which might work.  Setting  'FETCH_CMD=/usr/local/bin/wget -c'
in /etc/make.conf should definitely work around this issue.

Sorry I'm not more help.

Kevin Kinsey

-- 
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Sam.