Pkg_add not working properly

helixxx

hey. i've run into problems installing packages through pkg_add on my embedded board (alix w/ 256mb ram).
in specific, there seems to be a lack of free space on /var
i've solved this for now by simply disabling write protection, then creating a directory /1 on the root partition (enough space there) and then creating a symbolic link

/etc/rc.conf_mount_rw
mkdir /1
ln -s /1 /var/tmp

after the installations were done i simply removed /1 and the symbolic link i created.

packages i needed to install were: wget, nano and syslog-ng - which also lead to the installation of perl and python among some others.
python and perl by themselves gave me some sort of "not enough space" msg.

pkg_add -r python

i realize my solution ain't pretty but it worked for the time being.
if someone knows another workaround, please post here - i'd be interested.

–---------------------

uname -a
FreeBSD demo.pfsense 8.3-RC2 FreeBSD 8.3-RC2 #0: Sat Apr  7 21:57:20 EDT 2012     root@FreeBSD_8.3_pfSense_2.1.snaps.pfsense.org:/usr/obj./usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_wrap.8.i386  i386

stephenw10

Just FYI, you can use fetch and ee instead of wget and nano. They are already installed.

Steve

jimp

When we add packages on NanoBSD for gitsync or the package system, we do a little dance to make sure it works properly and doesn't run /var out of space:

Here is the snippet from gitsync to load git:


        echo "Cannot find git, fetching...";
        if (($g['platform'] == "nanobsd") || ($g['platform'] == "embedded")) {
                $pkgtmpdir = "/usr/bin/env PKG_TMPDIR=/root/ ";
                $pkgstagingdir = "/root/tmp";
                if (!is_dir($pkgstagingdir))
                        mkdir($pkgstagingdir);
                $pkgstaging = "-t {$pkgstagingdir}/instmp.XXXXXX";
        }
        system("{$pkgtmpdir}/usr/sbin/pkg_add {$pkgstaging} -r git");

By setting PKG_TMPDIR and passing a staging directory, it will process things in another place.

jimp

@stephenw10:

Just FYI, you can use fetch and ee instead of wget and nano. They are already installed.

^ that too.

helixxx

I'm just used to nano + wget … they're not that important anyway since i won't be needing them on a production system anyway.

So setting that variable I still also need to make sure the directory I have it point to is not read-only, I guess. Thanks for the info though. I remember using pkg_add with no problems on prior versions of pfsense (1.2 I think).

jimp

Not on embedded you wouldn't have. On a full install it always works fine. :-)