MacPorts throws errors on everything (include uninstall) since selfupdate

[Aba-Sah Dadzie]

On 18/02/2011 12:29, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:
> [Aba-Sah Dadzie<a.dadzie at dcs.shef.ac.uk>  (2011-02-18 12:14:01 UTC)]
>
>> I ran selfupdate almost a week ago, and my computer is pretty much
>> broken now - for any program remotely related to MacPorts.
>
> Is it *only* macports?
>

Everything was fine till I ran the selfupdate. And the only things that 
broke - immediately AFTER the update - I noticed because I was working 
on a paper so was using xdvi, emacs and gimp, were the programs I either 
installed through MacPorts and/or MacPorts works with. I did the 
selfupdate because I wanted to upgrade Graphviz, which I also installed 
via MacPorts.
Other programs that have nothing to do with MacPorts - TextEdit, MS 
Office, etc., I use regularly are fine. Which makes me doubt it's a 
hardware issue.

> Your litany of woes would make me suspect either a hardware problem or
> a corrupted system file outside of macports. But if you never have any
> problems with non-macports software then that sounds a mite unlikely.
>
> Still, if this happened to me, I would run a hardware test. Including
> a thorough disk test. A bad sector in the midst of a much used library
> would surely be an endless source of grief!
>
> When you said you reinstalled macports from scratch, did you really
> mean that? I.e., did you run  sudo rm -fr /opt/local  and then install
> macports and then all your ports?
>

no, I downloaded the disk image and tried the install from that. Then I 
followed the instructions for uninstall from the terminal from the 
MacPorts FAQ/Guide.

> If so, and if the hardware test shows no problems, I'd suspect a
> corrupt system file somewhere. In which case, maybe downloading the
> latest combo updater from apple.com and installing it just might fix
> the problem. Or failing that, a complete reinstall of your entire OS.
>
> It's time consuming and painful, but sometimes such drastic measures
> can't be avoided. I do hope you have good backups! Good luck.
>
> - Harald