understanding this portupgrade error

[RW]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:59:43 -0400
"Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm upgrading cacti, and it's failing on the net-snmp port. 
> 
> ===>  Installing for net-snmp-5.3.1_2
> ===>   net-snmp-5.3.1_2 depends on file: /usr/local/bin/perl5.8.8 -
> found ===>   Generating temporary packing list
> ===>  Checking if net-mgmt/net-snmp already installed
> ===>   An older version of net-mgmt/net-snmp is already installed
> (net-snmp-5.2.3_4)
>       You may wish to ``make deinstall'' and install this port again
>       by ``make reinstall'' to upgrade it properly.
>       If you really wish to overwrite the old port of
> net-mgmt/net-snmp without deleting it first, set the variable
> "FORCE_PKG_REGISTER" in your environment or the "make install"
> command line. *** Error code 1
> 
> I'm confused. Of course an older version is installed, that's why
> it's called an upgrade. 

The new doesn't overwrite the old.

Portupgrade removes the the old version before installing the new, and
if the new version fails to install, it restores the old version from a
backup package.

Possibly you have two net-snmp packages installed.  Another cause of
this is an incorrectly specified dependency, where net-snmp doesn't
actually provide the file that's used to determine whether net-snmp
needs to be built. Or there may have been a problem with the pkg_delete
of the old version.