pkg upgrade firefox hoses mate

[Valeri Galtsev]

On 12/20/18 11:09 AM, Scott Ballantyne wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 11:46 AM Carmel NY <carmel_ny at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 10:58:47 -0500, Scott Ballantyne stated:
>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 10:26 AM Arthur Chance <freebsd at qeng-ho.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 20/12/2018 15:06, Scott Ballantyne wrote:
>>>>> Good morning all,
>>>>> This is on a 10.4-release-p9 freebsd system.
>>>>
>>>> 10.4 hit end of life at the end of October so there's no guarantee any
>>>> port will work with it. You need to upgrade to 11 or 12.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yes, so I gather. However, I would draw a distinction between a port
>>> 'failing to work' and
>>> a port destroying a necessary function of a previously working system...
>>
>> To paraphrase something I once heard a speaker say, "It is not the OS's job
>> to stop a user from shooting themselves in the foot, but rather to deliver
>> the bullet with a high degree of accuracy."
>>
>>
> I don't disagree with that sentiment in the general case, but when 'user
> friendly enhancements'
> are supplied such as binary updates, they should be user friendly.
> 
> More than once, I have crashed a system with an upgrade/update.

There are two ways of looking at that:

1. Hey, I did some administration, things got screwed up. It must be a 
"pilot error", I'll find out what I should have done differently (and 
why). This lies in line with what Carmel told you, and usually my 
attitude attitude is the same. As, using almighty privileges, one can 
screw up anything

2. Another attitude could be: wait, I just executed trivial command 
("pkg -y install ..."), and answered some question reasonably I think, 
and things got grossly screwed up. So this whole thing (system, pkg 
utility etc) is screwed up. Well, there are many things that are 
involved in equation here, and as you know already I do not support this 
attitude. Most importantly in my opinion: this attitude is 
counter-productive from the point of view of your main goal, which in my 
understanding is: to have this system work for you with that extra 
software you need.

So, my suggestion seems transparent: try to find out what you need to do 
and how to make things work. Namely, change to attitude 1.

Valeri

>>
>> If you have the option, do a "fresh" install of FreeBSD 12. The
>> "freebsd-update" program will leave you with more problems.
>>
>>
> So far you have been on target with that observation...
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-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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