Clarify what version of pkg pkgbasify.lua requires

[hoanga]

I was hoping to update an internal FreeBSD machine

$ freebsd-version -kru
15.0-RELEASE
15.0-RELEASE
15.0-RELEASE-p1

I fetched pkgbasify.lua and set executable per README. Then tried to execute it. It seems that this script requires a more up to date version of pkg (I have already tried to update pkg to the latest available but will not update past 2.6.2. See below)

$ doas ./pkgbasify.lua
Running this tool will irreversibly modify your system to use pkgbase.
This tool and pkgbase are experimental and may result in a broken system.
It is highly recommended to backup your system before proceeding.
Do you accept this risk and wish to continue? (y/n) y
Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.
Error: pkg version too old! required: 2.7+, found: 2.6.2
Error: Using a pkg version older than 2.7 would result in loss of system config file contents.

Note pkg version

$ pkg --version
2.6.2

Checksum of downloaded pkgbasify.lua which should correspond to I believe commit 3fef4

$ md5sum pkgbasify.lua
31e94b11a4f5f548f5a24a85a3dc63a6  pkgbasify.lua

According to this, I need to update the system before pkgbasify will even run. However, I was hoping to move my system to pkgbase so I COULD update my system...

Please clarify what version of pkgbasify corresponds to which versions of FreeBSD it supports.

[asomers]

pkg comes from pkg (or /usr/sbin/pkg). It does not come from the base system. Can you not simply do pkg upgrade pkg and then run pkgbasify?

[hoanga]

Output below on attempt. Perhaps there is a misconfiguration somewhere (although I remember this as being a pretty plain FreeBSD 15 install).

$ doas pkg upgrade pkg
Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.

$ doas /usr/sbin/pkg upgrade pkg
Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.

$ pkg --version
2.6.2

[asomers]

It looks like pkg 2.6.2 is the latest version available in the quarterly branch, and 2.7.0 is only on the latest branch. That's certainly a problem. But as a workaround, you could try using pkgbasify at revision 099d720 .

[hoanga]

After inspecting more, it seems that the pkg definition was tracking quarterly instead of latest on this particular host. I have updated to latest and gave it another attempt (with success).

I am not sure what pkgbasify should do in situations like this.

$ cat /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf
#
# To disable a repository, instead of modifying or removing this file,
# create a /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf file, e.g.:
#
#   mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
#   echo "FreeBSD-ports: { enabled: no }" > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
#   echo "FreeBSD-ports-kmods: { enabled: no }" >> /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
#
# Note that the FreeBSD-base repository is disabled by default.
#

FreeBSD-ports: {
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}
FreeBSD-ports-kmods: {
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/kmods_quarterly_${VERSION_MINOR}",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkg",
  enabled: yes
}
FreeBSD-base: {
  url: "pkg+https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/base_release_${VERSION_MINOR}",
  mirror_type: "srv",
  signature_type: "fingerprints",
  fingerprints: "/usr/share/keys/pkgbase-${VERSION_MAJOR}",
  enabled: no
}

After the update to latest, pkgbasify is running.

$ doas ./pkgbasify.lua
Running this tool will irreversibly modify your system to use pkgbase.
This tool and pkgbase are experimental and may result in a broken system.
It is highly recommended to backup your system before proceeding.
Do you accept this risk and wish to continue? (y/n) y
Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Your packages are up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%     179 B   0.2 kB/s    00:01
Fetching data: 100%    11 MiB  11.2 MB/s    00:01
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD-ports repository update completed. 36662 packages processed.
Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%     179 B   0.2 kB/s    00:01
Fetching data: 100%    35 KiB  35.8 kB/s    00:01
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository update completed. 240 packages processed.
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%     179 B   0.2 kB/s    00:01
Fetching data: 100%    80 KiB  82.2 kB/s    00:01
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD-base repository update completed. 496 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.
Create a boot environment before conversion? (y/n) y
Creating //usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD-base.conf
Adding BACKUP_LIBRARIES=yes to /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf
Updating FreeBSD-base repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.conf: 100%     179 B   0.2 kB/s    00:01
Fetching data: 100%    80 KiB  82.2 kB/s    00:01
Processing entries: 100%
FreeBSD-base repository update completed. 496 packages processed.
FreeBSD-base is up to date.
The following 313 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
...
...
...

So seems for pkg to update, the ports configuration needs to not point to quarterly (which you mentioned) at this time.

[asomers]

The quarterly branch is the default for a -RELEASE install, the quarter ends on 30-june, and 15.1 is expected to be released on 2 June 2026, so I think this behavior should be considered a bug in pkgbasify. Hopefully @ifreund can fix it.

[ifreund]

Hmm, this is a rather unfortunate situation. I use latest packages on all my systems and neglected to check the pkg version available in the quarterly releases before landing the significant pkgbasify improvements that require pkg version 2.7+.

Ideally all users would benefit from these improvements, using pkg 2.7+ and the newest version of pkgbasify is strictly better than the old approach which depended on the etcupdate database.

I see the following options:

1. Have pkgbasify instruct users on how to switch to latest
2. Have pkgbasify automatically upgrade pkg itself from latest, but don't touch the system config or upgrade any other packages
3. Restore the old etcupdate behavior and support both the worse etcupdate based approach and the better pkg 2.7+ new approach until there are no more pkg versions older than 2.7 in repos.

[asomers]

I think that option 1 is not acceptable. Plenty of people use quarterly packages and like it. I like option 3 best.

[hoanga]

I agree option 3 is the smoothest experience from the standpoint of an end user just trying to use FreeBSD. This overall matches my experience with updating FreeBSD over time (years) which I cannot say is how other OSes or distros approach upgrades.

Perhaps adding some informational messages or at least a pointer to maybe something like a wiki page on how to migrate to pkgbase (without pkgbasify itself becoming an interactive migration tutorial) would be beneficial for (the more hands-on) users who want to perform the migration themselves.

[grahamperrin]

#49 (comment)

2. Have pkgbasify automatically upgrade pkg itself from latest, but don't touch the system config or upgrade any other packages

2.6.2_1 has the ability to install the online package for 2.7.5,

2.6.2_1 has the ability to add (but not install) the online package for 2.7.5, without specifying a repo. For example:

root@dvd1:~ # pkg -v

2.6.2
root@dvd1:~ # pkg install -U https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:15:amd64/latest/All/pkg-2.7.5.pkg

pkg: No packages available to install matching 'https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:15:amd64/latest/All/pkg-2.7.5.pkg' have been found in the repositories
root@dvd1:~ # pkg add https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:15:amd64/latest/All/pkg-2.7.5.pkg

Fetching pkg-2.7.5:   0%
Fetching pkg-2.7.5:  86%  5328 KiB   5.5 MB/s    00:00 ETA
Fetching pkg-2.7.5: 100%  6152 KiB   6.3 MB/s    00:01    
Installing pkg-2.7.5...
package pkg is already installed, forced install
Extracting pkg-2.7.5:   0%
…
Extracting pkg-2.7.5: 100%
root@dvd1:~ # pkg -v

2.7.5
root@dvd1:~ # 

Side note: freebsd/freebsd-ports@aaad225 for 2.7.0 included:

install: accept http://, https:// and file:// URLs to install packages directly