firefox 2 on FreeBSD 6.1

I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
of that stupidity.

Here is what I did:

export PACKAGESITE=ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/
packages-6-stable/All
pkg_add -r firefox-2.0.0.4,1.tbz

The result were warnings about versions of some libraries, Among
others Firefox complained that it
would like to have nss-3.11.5 instead of nss-3.11. Anyway, Firefox
finally instlled and refused to work.
The error message was:

/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: /usr/local/lib/firefox/components/libpipnss.so:
Undefined symbol "SEC_RegisterDefaultHttpClient"

Looking at the warnings, I concluded that nss libraries might be the
cause. I tried to force installation of
newer version, resulting in more incompatibilities. Moreover my old
Mozilla, which I use for some purposes, refused to work.

Next thing I downloaded the package nss-3.11.5, uncompressed it:

tar jxf nss-3.11.5.tbz

and copied the contents of lib and lib/nss subdirectories into /usr/
local/lib/firefox, which was listed in LD_LIBRARY_PATH in firefox
startup script.

That worked, and I am typing this message in firefox-2 to Google
Groups

DG

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic wrote:
: I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
: work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
: FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
: upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
: of that stupidity.

I feel smarter just reading that

Howard Goldstein wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
> wrote:
> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
> : of that stupidity.
>
> I feel smarter just reading that

What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
something. :-)

-Jason

Jason Bourne wrote:
> Howard Goldstein wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
>> wrote:
>> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
>> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
>> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
>> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
>> : of that stupidity.
>>
>> I feel smarter just reading that
>
> What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
> upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
> search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
> something. :-)

If using Ports, I'd just utter something like

portupgrade -Rr firefox2

So what's the equivalent in Packages to pull in the dependencies
automatically? Can't see this in the Handbook.

In article Jason Bourne
writes:
>Howard Goldstein wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
>> wrote:
>> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
>> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
>> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
>> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
>> : of that stupidity.
>>
>> I feel smarter just reading that
>
>What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
>upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
>search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
>something. :-)

Of course he doesn't, but even having to do the x.org upgrade (which he
is probably unaware of) can be considered painful as indicated in
another thread, and having to do it to be able to use a newer browser,
at least when it has security fixes, could certainly be considered
"stupid". I know, I know, FreeBSD doesn't have the manpower to maintain
branches of the ports tree, but sometimes it would really be nice...

--Per Hedeland
per-at-hedeland.org

After replacing --martin-- with a small shell script on Wednesday 27 Jun
2007 07:22, the following appeared on stdout:

> So what's the equivalent in Packages to pull in the dependencies
> automatically? *Can't see this in the Handbook.

Portupgrade -PPRr firefox, assuming the package repository has the latest
packages built and pkgtools.conf has the correct repository information
[1]. Pointyhat is your friend in such situations. BTW, Firefox 2.0.0.4 is
www/firefox, with the deprecated 1.5.x release being www/firefox15.

[1] See the "useful predefined functions" section at the beginning of
pgktools.conf for an idea of where to plug alternate repositories into the
file.
--
Radio glossary #54
M3: A very old BMW pretending to be a boy-racer chariot.

--martin-- wrote:
> Jason Bourne wrote:
> > Howard Goldstein wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
> >> wrote:
> >> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
> >> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
> >> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
> >> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
> >> : of that stupidity.
> >>
> >> I feel smarter just reading that
> >
> > What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
> > upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
> > search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
> > something. :-)
>
> If using Ports, I'd just utter something like
>
> portupgrade -Rr firefox2
>
> So what's the equivalent in Packages to pull in the dependencies
> automatically? Can't see this in the Handbook.

A priori, portupgrade -Rr A is not sufficient to solve the problem of
upgrading A. Indeed it will upgrade A and all ports on which A depends,
and which depend on A. Suppose there is a port B on which A depends and
a port C for which B is required. Now it is possible that C is no more
working. Hence it is the whole connected component of port A which has
to be upgraded if you want to be consistent for sure. But from my
experience there is basically only one big connected component in a
FreeBSD installation, with possibly a couple of small islands. As a
consequence you have to upgrade all installed ports, if you want to be
sure that no glitch occurs. You cannot even rely on a bump of a port
version number to detect what is to be upgraded, since, for example, if
gettext is upgraded almost everything has to be upgraded irrespective of
their version numbers. The consequence is that, maintaining a FreeBSD
ports installation, while it may require only light upgrades from time
to time, requires some regular recompiling or reinstalling of everything
when major events occur.

Pkg_add pulls in the dependencies automatically, that is it will install
all necessary dependencies. However it will *not* detect and upgrade
dependencies when upgrading a port. On the contrary it will complain
about conflicts between new and old dependencies, so that you will have
to do a lot of work manually. If you accept to compile your ports,
portmaster or portupgrade -a will do the job. However there is some
probability that ports which have changed name will not be followed
correctly and that old cruft will not be removed. People have tried
devising other systems, for example Sean Farley has written a perl
script pc.pl, i have written a python script pkgupgrade, but all have to
fight against considerable and fundamental inadequacies of the ports system.

One of the most useful tools would be to keep a copy of the ports that
have been installed by deliberate order of the end user, and those
installed as dependencies (this is what aptitude does for Debian). This
way, following only the "ordered" ports one could reliably upgrade the
system and remove old dependencies which are no more required. Then
uou have to fight against the constant renaming of ports, such as
A -> A.devel -> A-000123 -> B-2.0 -> ...
without any understandable logic. Moral of the story, it is not
tomorrow, and probably never, that you will see something which simply
works, like for all Debian like systems. It would need to impose order
on the system, which would destroy the wonderful flexibility many
users are so fond of. To use an analogy with famous E. Raymond sentence,
FreeBSD ports are the bazar, and Debian packages the cathedral, with all
the good and the bad coming with that.



--

Michel TALON

On 2007-06-27, Per Hedeland wrote:
> In article Jason Bourne
> writes:
>>Howard Goldstein wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
>>> wrote:
>>> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
>>> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
>>> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
>>> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
>>> : of that stupidity.
>>>
>>> I feel smarter just reading that
>>
>>What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
>>upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
>>search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
>>something. :-)
>
> Of course he doesn't, but even having to do the x.org upgrade (which he
> is probably unaware of) can be considered painful as indicated in
> another thread, and having to do it to be able to use a newer browser,
> at least when it has security fixes, could certainly be considered
> "stupid". I know, I know, FreeBSD doesn't have the manpower to maintain
> branches of the ports tree, but sometimes it would really be nice...
>
> --Per Hedeland
> per-at-hedeland.org
>

Ahh yes. Reminds me of service pack 2 from Microsoft. Of course they don't
have the manpower . . . Never mind. I guess sometimes upgrading a system of
the size and complexity of a modern computer system can be problematic.

Cheers.

JE

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:09:23 -0500, JE wrote:
: On 2007-06-27, Per Hedeland wrote:
: > In article Jason Bourne
: > writes:
: >>Howard Goldstein wrote:
: >>
: >>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:16:58 -0700, Drazen Gemic
: >>> wrote:
: >>> : I'd like to share an useful advice. I am using FreeBSD 6.1 in a daily
: >>> : work, and don't have time to upgrade to FreeBSD 6.2. Also I wanted
: >>> : FireFox 2. Besides, I think that it is more than stupid to have to
: >>> : upgrade OS just to have newer browser, and I don't want to be a part
: >>> : of that stupidity.
: >>>
: >>> I feel smarter just reading that
: >>
: >>What I _really_ don't understand is why he thinks he has to upgrade an OS to
: >>upgrade a port. Must be something I haven't RTFM'd yet. I'll Google..., and
: >>search the Handbook for possible explanation(s). Maybe I can learn
: >>something. :-)
: >
: > Of course he doesn't, but even having to do the x.org upgrade (which he
: > is probably unaware of) can be considered painful as indicated in
: > another thread, and having to do it to be able to use a newer browser,
: > at least when it has security fixes, could certainly be considered
: > "stupid". I know, I know, FreeBSD doesn't have the manpower to maintain
: > branches of the ports tree, but sometimes it would really be nice...
: >
: > --Per Hedeland
: > per-at-hedeland.org
: >
:
: Ahh yes. Reminds me of service pack 2 from Microsoft. Of course they don't
: have the manpower . . . Never mind. I guess sometimes upgrading a system of
: the size and complexity of a modern computer system can be problematic.


The project does have some very limited resource$ but would you rather
direct them towards packaging up something that should be out in
binary upgrade form with 6.3 or for the other things that were on the
"summertime commisioning to-do" list? I bet even the guy who kicked
off this discussion would rather see the long lived stuff receive the
resources.

(And doesn't it say something good about our user's resourcefulness
that one has a technique to force through the firefox update without
doing the xorg upgrade)

Per Hedeland wrote:
[snip]
>
> Of course he doesn't, but even having to do the x.org upgrade (which he
> is probably unaware of) can be considered painful as indicated in
> another thread, and having to do it to be able to use a newer browser,
> at least when it has security fixes, could certainly be considered
> "stupid". I know, I know, FreeBSD doesn't have the manpower to maintain
> branches of the ports tree, but sometimes it would really be nice...
>
> --Per Hedeland
> per-at-hedeland.org

Yes - the xorg upgrade was scary. I read the UPDATING about 5 times until I
exactly understood everything. I even printed out the pertinent section so
I'd have a cheat sheet. I had also been following all the writeups in the
mail lists so I knew about some of the 'gotchas'. When I finally went to do
it there was no difficulty, just two days of recompiling stuff like KDE.
But for me it went well, but that's because I relied on other people who
are smarter than me and their work.

But I was thinking of the xorg upgrade with reference to the comment(s) and
still decided it was on the ports side of the house and not OS update
related.

-Jason