How to repair networking

[doug at safeport.com]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2011, Polytropon wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:00:13 -0400 (EDT), doug wrote:
>> I was running 8.2 stable and kde3.5. Originally I want to install chrome. I
>> trying to update the many interlocking components I eventually got to the point
>> where I thought I would just start again so I removed all ports.
>>
>> At this point I lost networking, neither DHCP or manually configuring an IP
>> address worked so I put my data on a USB drive and really started over. My
>> question is would rebuilding the world likely have worked? If what else should I
>> have tried before jumping off the deep end? Thanks for any thoughts
>
> It should _not_ happen that removing installed ports prevents
> you from gaining essential networking functionality, such as
> obtaining data per DHCP.
>
> If you have installed the sources (/usr/src subtree), and the
> required building tools are working, try to rebuild world and
> install it as described in /usr/src/Makefile's comment section.
> If your world _matches_ the kernel installed, you can omit that
> step. In case it does _not_, you'll have to rebuild both world
> and kernel.
>
> Afterwards, you should be able to reinstall all needed ports
> and then restore the data to the system.

Thank you. I followed the rules [I believe]. My steps where

    1) portmaster -r -PP xorg
    2) portmaster -r -P xorg

I never got to the next [logical] step because I made a mistake configuring some 
of the builds in step 2. This broke KDE in a way that I did not deem repairable. 
Hence I thought it would be easier just to start again, especially since kde was 
still 3.5. I have never had success in unraveling the interlocking dependencies 
in the some 400 ports that comprise xorg/kde. Some are clearly wrong e.g, a 
dependancy on the wrong version of Perl that fails various builds. Most are [to 
me] much more obscure, anyway next I did

    3) pkg_delete -a

I still had a working FreeBSD at this point. I then did a package add for xorg 
forgetting that twm was unbundled since I last built the laptop. Also I could 
not find xdm as a package. It was after trying to find xdm and configuring 
X[org] that networking 'disappeared'. I was so perplexed I did not think to 
reinstall FreeBSD. All the 'right stuff' was in /usr/[src|obj] so I might 
have gotten by without rebuilding.

I was wondering (1) if there were/are kernel and/or OS changes in xorg that my 
steps might have killed and (2) if I should have started top down rather than 
bottom up in trying to update the required dependancies?




_____
Douglas Denault
http://www.safeport.com
doug at safeport.com
Voice: 301-217-9220
   Fax: 301-217-9277