Hopelessly outdated install?

Brian T. Carcich briantcarcich at gmail.com
Sat Aug 29 05:53:44 UTC 2020


Thanks for the info.

This is not my system, someone else let it get to this state, and I have
been given the task to get it working.  It looks like Macports was
installed but never used.  Running the installer sounds like a good plan
(wiping the disk with a reinstall of MacOS from scratch sounds like a
better plan;-).

"MacOS 11.12" is a typo on my part:  it should be 10.12.

Thanks again.


On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:31 PM Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org>
wrote:

>
> On Aug 28, 2020, at 13:00, Brian T. Carcich wrote:
>
> > Context
> >
> > I am a consultant
> > - I have used Macports, but am by no means an expert
> > - with only SSH-only access,
> > - root access (via sudo)
> > - brought in to build a particular X-windows app on this Mac
> >   - Motif (libXm) is one missing piece of the puzzle (at least)
> >   - the app builds elsewhere with little trouble, including my ancient
> AirBook, but I have that in my hot little hands
> > Darwin 16.7.0 ca. June, 2017, x86_64-apple-darwin16.7.0
> > Xcode version [gcc --version]:  Apple LLVM version 9.0.0
> (clang-900-0.39.2)
> > Macports version:  1.9.2, under /opt/local/*/macports/
> > - 13 ports total
>
> If you're running MacPorts 1.9.2, that's very out of date. We released
> MacPorts 2.0.0 on July 21, 2011 and the current version is 2.6.3. MacPorts
> is designed under the expectation that you will keep up to date by running
> "sudo port selfupdate" and "sudo port upgrade outdated" occasionally, but
> certainly at least once a year. We remove some port upgrade paths after
> they have been in place for one year, so waiting longer than that will
> result in some upgrade failures that you'll have to puzzle out on your own
> or ask us about later.
>
> It is our intention that "sudo port selfupdate" should be able to upgrade
> you from old versions of MacPorts base to newer ones, but we certainly
> would not have tested upgrading from a version that old and it is possible
> that something in the selfupdate upgrade process has broken for such use
> cases.
>
> You should always be able to bypass selfupdate problems and upgrade to the
> latest version by downloading the latest MacPorts installer package for
> your OS version from https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/ and running
> it. You can run installer packages from the command line using the
> "installer" command. (Read "man installer".) You should still manually
> update all conf files under /opt/local/etc/macports.
>
> What's more concerning is that you're running macOS 10.12, but you're
> using a version of MacPorts base that dates from a time when the latest
> version of Mac OS X was 10.6. This should never have worked.
>
> Is it possible that you installed your ports while you were using Mac OS X
> 10.6 and later upgraded to macOS 10.12? Hoping this was working all the way
> back in MacPorts 1.9.2, you can check if that's the case by running the
> following command, showing you all ports that were installed while not on
> Darwin 16:
>
> port -v installed | grep -v 'darwin 16'
>
> If it shows any such ports, then after upgrading MacPorts base you should
> upgrade them (if they're outdated) or rebuild them (if not outdated).
>
> Normally I would refer you to:
>
> https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration
>
> but you mentioned that uninstalling all ports would be difficult due to a
> MacPorts-provided ssh daemon.
>
>
> > So far ...
> >
> > Finally got [selfupdate] to finish by changing rsync_dir in macports.conf
> > - per https://trac.macports.org/ticket/53414
> > - but it still says "base version 1.9.2 installed," and "Warning: No
> version file found, please rerun selfupdate," and "MacPorts base is
> probably trunk or a release candidate"
> > - [-d selfupdate] fails to parse 11 of the 13 ports
> >
> > [upgrade outdated] yields "Error: Unable to open port: invalid command
> name 'port::register_callback'"
> > - nothing useful from The Google so far
> > - [-d] output below
>
> Don't bother trying to troubleshoot any port upgrade failures with a
> MacPorts base version that old. Our ports collection is written with the
> assumption that you are using the latest MacPorts base. Upgrade base first.
> For example, "port::register_callback" is a procedure that wasn't added to
> MacPorts base until version 2.2.0, and some port or portgroup is using it
> now, but naturally MacPorts 1.9.2 wouldn't know about it.
>
> -Ryan
>
>
>
> > My question
> >
> > My gut feel is that this is a hopelessly outdated installation of
> Macports.  Rather than shaving the yak and googling as each new problem
> crops up, is it reasonable to consider removing whatever Macport is there
> and starting over?  I am not even confident that the [uninstall] option
> would work.
>
> It is always possible to uninstall, if you want to; instructions are here:
>
> https://guide.macports.org/chunked/installing.macports.uninstalling.html
>
>
> > N.B. [uninstall] is not a solution if the SSH daemon is a Macport, as I
> would lose access.
> >
> > Or do I need someone local to the machine to poke around from the GUI or
> RDP?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Brian Carcich
> >
> >
> > Output of [-d ugrade outdated]
> > ncursesw (5.8_0 is installed; the port was not found in the port index)
> > DEBUG: epoch: in tree: 0 installed: 0
> > DEBUG: gmp 6.2.0_1 exists in the ports tree
> > DEBUG: gmp 5.0.1_1  is the latest installed
> > DEBUG: gmp 5.0.1_1  is active
> > DEBUG: Merging existing variants '' into variants
> > DEBUG: new fully merged portvariants:
> > DEBUG: Changing to port directory: /opt/local/var/macports/sources/
> > rsync.macports.org/release/ports/devel/gmp
> >
> > DEBUG: OS darwin/16.7.0 (Mac OS X 11.2) arch i386
>
> That's certainly curious output, since Darwin 16.7.0 is actually macOS
> 10.12, not 11.2. But there could have been bugs in the way that MacPorts
> dealt with newer macOS version numbers which was addressed in newer
> versions of MacPorts.
>
>
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