sysinstall fails to fetch; pkg install succeeds

[Gary Aitken]

On 11/21/14 09:36, Ian Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Nov 2014 22:10:12 -0700 Gary Aitken <freebsd at dreamchaser.org> wrote:
> 
>  > I'm in the process of installing a 9.3 system.
>  >
>  > "pkg install foo" seems to work fine, fetching from the network.
>  > However, if I run sysinstall (forgot to include the handbook), it fails
>  > when trying to fetch from the network.  I've tried both FTP mode and
>  > FTP through firewall mode.  What does sysinstall do that's different when 
>  > trying to fetch from the network?
> 
> sysinstall only knows about the old pkg_tools (pkg_add etc) which have 
> been defunct for quite a while.  I don't know why the pkg_* binaries are 
> even left in place (let alone executable) on pkg(8)-using systems, as I 
> found out the hard way after pkg2ng'ing 9.2R, then ungrokingly running 
> the old not-yet-pkg-aware portmaster, managing to make quite a mess.

Ah, thanks.
But what do you mean by not-yet-pkg-aware portmaster?
I've been installing ports using portmaster on my 9.2 and pkg seems to work
with it just fine.  By that I mean after installing using portmaster,
pkg info reports it as being installed.
portmaster also seems to work find on this newly being built 9.3.

> For anyone running an 8.x or 9.x system using pkg(8) exclusively, maybe 
> via pkg2ng, I'd recommend considering - if rm seems drastic - at least:
> 
>  # chmod a-x /usr/sbin/pkg_*

good idea.  will do that.

> Try bsdconfig(8) which I think still (re)installs the docs, and provides 
> a (working?) front end for installing packages.  Let's know how it goes?
> 
> bsdconfig provides most if not all 'post-installation' functions from 
> sysinstall, similar look'n'feel to bsdinstall (invoked for disk setup).

Uh-oh.  Now I'm pretty confused...

On this new 9.3, tried "bsdconfig doscinstall"
Went through the dialogs, told it to use the main ftp.freebsd.org.
It logged in ok, then I got:
 "Attempting to update repository catalogue from selected media."
 Error: No pkg(8) database found.

I've already done pkg2ng but just for grins did it again.
/etc/make.conf has WITH-PKGNG="YES"

pkg itself seems to work, at least "pkg info" results look correct.

So what's it complaining about?

> sysinstall still has a use on 9.x, but package installation isn't it :)

I've been using portmaster, but I didn't think the docs were installable as
a port?