>> This is just too bizarre; it's hard to imagine how such a serious
>> problem could make it into a release, ...
>  
>  fyi, pkgsrc HEAD is no release.  quite the contrary, it's a fast moving
>  development target.

My mistake; I did not mean to "track current", but indeed to get a
stable tree.

>  if you want a stable pkgsrc tree, track the quarterly branches
>  (currently pkgsrc-2005Q4), which get only security and critical fixes.

I'm trying to find the corresponding source tarball, but
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc-2005Q4 seems to
contains just the binary package distributions for (some of) the
various ports, as opposed to pkgsrc-current (and its tarball
pkgsrc-current.tar.gz), which contains the source tree that I am
looking for.

I humbly suggest that it would be less confusing for people if
/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc-yyyyQn and /pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc-current
referred to the same kind of thing, that is, all source tarballs
or all binary distributions.  Where *can* I get a pkgsrc-2005Q4
tarball, anyway?  I have looked through the web site documentation
fairly carefully, and remain in the dark.

For now, in the absence of a 2005Q4 source tarball, I shall try
instead to get a newer pkgsrc via cvs, as suggested by wiz, who
points out that "the tarballs are a bit behind".  This requires
learning to use cvs, which according to the documentation involves
simply:

  # cd /usr/pkgsrc
  # cvs -q update -dP

but when I try this, I get:

  cvs update: in directory inputmethod/canna-server-bin:
  cvs update: cannot read CVS/Root: No such file or directory
  cvs update: please correct this problem
  cvs update: in directory inputmethod/canna-server-bin:
  cvs [update aborted]: cannot read CVS/Repository: No such file or directory

Trying again with "-t" instead of "-q" produces massive output until:

  S-> xCVS_CHDIR /tmp/xvs-serv24470/ham/tfkiss/files
  select: Bad file descriptor

Examining the allegedly faulty directory, I see:

  # ls -l inputmethod/canna-server-bin/CVS
  -rw-rw-r--  1 root  wheel  0 Dec 29 02:08 Entries
  -rw-rw-r--  1 root  wheel  0 Dec 29 02:08 Repository
  -rw-rw-r--  1 root  wheel  0 Dec 29 02:08 Root

... which looks pretty useless, so I removed the directory
"inputmethod/canna-server-bin" and repeated "cvs -q update -dP".
I ran into the same problem with "inputmethod/canuum", which also 
contained a bunch of empty files in CVS/.  

  # ls -l */*/CVS/Repository | grep " 0 " 
... revealed 248 more likely bad packages, which I removed from my
tree, then re-ran the update.  Oops, there are some bad
subdirectories.  Let's try this instead:

  # find . -path CVS/Repository -size 0c -print
... OK, this whole tree is too corrupt to use.  I have removed it, and
am using CVS to repopulate to it.  It seems to be working.

With luck tomorrow evening I will be able to install packages.  :-)


Anne.
-- 
Ms. Anne Bennett, as a private citizen:  anne@porcupine.montreal.qc.ca
Also reachable more officially at work:  anne@encs.concordia.ca