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Sorting out a system update failure for FreeBSD

Published on 3rd April 2014 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

With my tendency to apply Linux updates using the command, I was happy to see that something similar was possible in FreeBSD too. The first step is to fire up a terminal session and drop into root using the su command. That needs the root superuser password to continue, and the next step is to update the local repositories using the following command:

pkg update

After that, it is time to download updated packages and install these by issuing this command:

pkg upgrade

Most of the time, that is sufficient, but I discovered that there are times when the above fails and additional interventions are needed. What I had uncovered were dependency error messages, and I set to looking around the web for remedies to this. One forum question that was similar to what I had met with the suggestion of consulting the file called UPDATING in /usr/ports/. An answer like that looks unhelpful, but for the inclusion of advice where extra actions were needed. Also, there is a useful article on updating FreeBSD ports that gives more in the way of background knowledge so you understand the more about what needs doing.

Following both that and the UPDATING file resulted in my taking the following sequence of steps. The first act was to download and initialise the Ports Collection, a set of build instructions.

portsnap fetch extract

The above is a one time only action, so future updates are done as follows:

portsnap fetch update

With an up to date Ports Collection in place, it was time to install portman:

pkg install portman

A look through /usr/ports/UPDATING revealed the commands I needed for updating Python and Perl to address the dependency problem that I was having:

portmaster -o devel/py-setuptools27 devel/py-setuptools
portmaster -r py\*setuptools

With those completed, I re-ran pkg update again and all was well. The extra actions needed to get that result will not get forgotten, and I am sharing them on here so I know where they are. If anyone else has use for them, that would be even better.

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