freebsd-update on FreeBSD 6.x

[Manolis Kiagias]

Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   when running "freebsd-update fetch" on FreeBSD 6.x I get the error:
>
> Fetching public key...
> fetch: http://update.freebsd.org/i386/6.1/pub.key: No address record
> Error fetching updates
>

I've seen the "No address record" in the past in few of my machines. 
The update.freebsd.org address is a pool of addresses actually and AFAIR
there were some problems with  DNS for some people.  I don't recall the
exact cause, but you will get over it by specifying a specific server in
freebsd-update.conf, like update1.freebsd.org

This may not be your only problem though.
>
> I've previously had a search around and compared the config file with
> that present by default on FreeBSD 7.x (which works without any
> hacking etc) but I never did work out what is wrong or what should be
> in a good config file. For one thing the directory its looking in for
> the pub.key seems to be hardcoded as "/i386/6.1/" or at least that
> path is not present in my conf file, perhaps its possible to add an
> additional line to the conf file to modify this... Can anyone point me
> in the right direction?

A quick visit to http://update.freebsd.org does not show this directory
- although this maybe intentional. I suggest you try the server change
and if you connect but still fail to get the key, then go on and hack
the script. I don't have a 6.1 machine around, but freebsd-update is
just a sh script and you should be able to find what's going on.  There
is nothing hardcoded in it, at least in the version distributed with
7.x. In fact I would try running the 7.x version on this system.