Found the problem; it looks as though PLISTs and packages don't play too
nicely with /etc/mk.conf.

I had MANZ=<nothing> inside /etc/mk.conf; it took this as a definition
and decided that all my man pages were to be installed in .gz format,
contrary to what it says in the comment inside mk.conf.  Go figure.

Anyway, commented out the MANZ= line and all is once again well with
the world.

FWIW:  The first thing I did was forcibly define LOCALBASE to be /usr/local
instead of /usr/pkg.  To make sure, I symlinked /usr/local to /usr/pkg.
I _really_ don't want another hierarchy floating about, can you tell?

Thorsten Frueauf sez:
/*
 * Hello!
 * 
 * > They're non-fatal; the package in question gets installed, but the messages
 * > indicate to me that something in the package does not correspond correctly
 * > to what is actually being installed on the system.
 * 
 * Will you tell us which packages did cause this? What version of the
 * pkg_utilities do you use?
 * 
 * To me it looks as if the PLIST of this package was not ok.
 * 
 * Please note that this should be discussed in tech-pkg@netbsd.org
 * rather than current-users.
 * 
 * Greets
 * -- 
 *    Name  : Thorsten Frueauf            Milano@irc cri@onaliM       //
 *    E-Mail: s_frueau@ira.uka.de oder ukfy@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de     \X/
 */





				--*greywolf;
--
Solaris 2.0 -- "What a totally amazing excellent discovery.  NOT!"