# PortDowngrade Trouble



## Ruler2112 (Sep 11, 2012)

When updating my 8.2 system in an attempt to fix a problem, LibreOffice stopped working.  I found mention of portdowngrade online, which purports to revert a given port to a previous version.  Since LibreOffice 3.4.3_2 worked perfectly on my system until this mess started, I'd like to downgrade it to that version, recompile, and be happy.  Unfortunately, I get the following when trying to run it and have no idea how to proceed.

I've never used CVS before and while I know it's related to source code storage for open source projects, that pretty much exhausts my knowledge about it.  Given this, I'm sure the solution is relatively simple and I'm hoping somebody here will know the answer.




```
Downgrading port: editors/libreoffice

Step 1: Checking out port from CVS repository
No CVS root directory set! Please use the -s option.

cvs checkout: No CVSROOT specified!  Please use the `-d' option
cvs [checkout aborted]: or set the CVSROOT environment variable.
portdowngrade error: Can not check out port editors/libreoffice

An error had occured. If this was an cvs error, try another cvs server.
If this was an cvs login error, try the -o option.
```


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## Majorix (Sep 11, 2012)

Hmm, never heard of portdowngrade. However, one thing puzzles me: Where does it find the old sources to build the old version? As far as I know the FreeBSD ports tree doesn't keep old sources. Maybe that is your problem.


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## t1066 (Sep 12, 2012)

You should look through the last few lines of the Makefile of portdowngrade. Then rebuild portdowngrade accordingly.


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## Ruler2112 (Sep 12, 2012)

No idea where it gets the sources from, though I honestly don't too much care if I can go back to a version of LibreOffice that worked.  

I did read that message when it was echoed to the screen during the build.  Do I need to use a special CVS server as default?  If so, could you recommend what one to use?  I figured by the wording that it'd use a 'normal' server by default and since I don't know any better, accepted the default.  The handbook page referenced doesn't help much given my extremely limited knowledge of CVS.


```
.if !defined(DEFAULT_CVS_SERVER)
  @${ECHO_MSG} ""
  @${ECHO_MSG} "Press CTRL-C and define DEFAULT_CVS_SERVER"
  @${ECHO_MSG} "(e.g. make DEFAULT_CVS_SERVER=\":pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs. ... .FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs\" install)"
  @${ECHO_MSG} "if you want to use a special CVS server as default. See"
  @${ECHO_MSG} "http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/anoncvs.html"
  @${ECHO_MSG} "for a list of possible cvs server"
  @${ECHO_MSG} ""
  @sleep 3
.endif
```


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## Ruler2112 (Sep 12, 2012)

Figured it out.  For those with the same problem in the future, I found a web page with the information needed.  After rebuilding portdowngrade with the parameters shown on that page (make DEFAULT_CVS_SERVER=\":pserver:anoncvs@anoncvs.tw.freebsd.org:/home/ncvs\") and reinstalling, I re-ran portdowngrade editors/libreoffice.  While I got a lot of the following errors, they didn't seem to affect anything but the display.


```
cvs checkout: warning: failed to open /root/.cvspass for reading: No such file or directory
```

Hit space a couple times to get back to the latest version of 3.4.3_2, selected that line number, and confirmed - the port's Makefile now shows as this version!  Rebuilding now - hopefully, this will get LO back running.


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## Ruler2112 (Sep 14, 2012)

While my previous post solved the portdowngrade problem, it did not remedy the situation as I then got build errors, most likely due to there being more updated software than the port expected.  Thankfully, I got a response from the maintainer of the libreoffice port and his suggestion proved to be the solution.  For those having trouble building/running LibreOffice on an 8.x system, try make WITH_GCC=yes and then make WITH_GCC=yes install - LibreOffice is now running on my system after those two commands.


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