# Inconsistancies With Port Installations



## Soveriegn (Nov 10, 2020)

Hi All, Freebsd Newbie here.

I've been going through the handbook, currently at 4.5 Ports collections and I have noticed depending on the time of day installing through ports atleast fails or installs successfully.

As an example I tried to install Vim the other day and everything was fine untill installing ruby support dependancies, it seemed nothing was available and the only way to get round this was to take out ruby support. There was some other issues along the way after, but eventually everything was installed ok.

Another example which is more recent, was the installation of portmaster. Last night I kept getting code error 1, further up was text regarding fetch and being unable to resolve. However this morning I tried again just to see if it would work and/or do something different, and it did! It just installed without a problem, I did nothing different to make it work.

So my actual point/question is, are the repositories for the ports turned off during during certain times based on where they are hosted or is this just unfortunate outages, or am I completely wrong and I'm clearly doing something wrong?

Also I note this post can seem quite vague as I have no screenshots of what it is I'm actually getting, as I never actually intended to make this post in the first place I will in the future make a concerted effort to document these errors when I come by them.


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2020)

Soveriegn said:


> So my actual point/question is, are the repositories for the ports turned off during during certain times based on where they are hosted or is this just unfortunate outages, or am i completely wrong and im clearly doing something wrong?


Distfiles are downloaded from the upstream sources, they're not downloaded from a FreeBSD repository.

It sounds like you just have a dodgy internet connection and that's what is causing the problems.


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## Soveriegn (Nov 10, 2020)

Thanks for the quick reply SirDice.

I do change from being hardwired into network at work (via usb-c tb3 dock) and wifi when at home, however the issues start towards the evening while I am still hardwired. so i couldnt confidentley say it is merely because I am using wifi, possible compatibility issue when taking data through usb-c?


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2020)

When you're wired is your wireless still active? DHCP might cause your network gateway and/or DNS settings to flip back and forth between wired and wireless. Messages like "unable to resolve" are an indication your DNS name resolving doesn't work. If the connection is down DNS resolving obviously doesn't work either. But it could also just be a problem with your DNS settings.


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## chrbr (Nov 10, 2020)

Soveriegn said:


> Another example which is more recent, was the installation of portmaster. Last night I kept getting code error 1, further up was text regarding fetch and being unable to resolve. However this morning I tried again just to see if it would work and/or do something different, and it did! It just installed without a problem, I did nothing different to make it work.


At least scotia has reported the same behaviour in a recent post. About the netowrk interface - if you change often between wireless and wired it might make sense to configure a lagg(4) interface. It just works as described in the handbook. The MAC adress of both physical interfaces are set to one same adress. Wireless or wired are used depending on the status of the wired interface. There is no manual interaction required.


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## Soveriegn (Nov 10, 2020)

SirDice said:


> When you're wired is your wireless still active? DHCP might cause your network gateway and/or DNS settings to flip back and forth between wired and wireless. Messages like "unable to resolve" are an indication your DNS name resolving doesn't work. If the connection is down DNS resolving obviously doesn't work either. But it could also just be a problem with your DNS settings.



Yes though not connected to anything, but I suppose that doesn't really matter.

I will give it another go tonight, and see how far I can get installing gnome.


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2020)

Soveriegn said:


> I will give it another go tonight, and see how far I can get installing gnome.


Take note of cause and effect. Try to find the underlying cause instead of focusing on the symptoms.


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## Soveriegn (Nov 11, 2020)

chrbr said:


> At least scotia has reported the same behaviour in a recent post. About the netowrk interface - if you change often between wireless and wired it might make sense to configure a lagg(4) interface. It just works as described in the handbook. The MAC adress of both physical interfaces are set to one same adress. Wireless or wired are used depending on the status of the wired interface. There is no manual interaction required.


Thanks, currently looking into configuring it now, though all examples I find show setting the NICs under a static ip. 

Am I missing something?


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