# pkg_upgrade issue: too many parallel fetches



## harishankar (May 7, 2010)

I have a problem with the pkg_upgrade tool found in bsdadminscripts. It is creating too many parallel fetches and this is causing the pkg_upgrade script to time out and fail. 

Is there any way to avoid pkg_upgrade from stopping when it comes across any FTP error? I am not sure, but the fetch processes keep running even after pkg_upgrade stops.


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## zeiz (May 7, 2010)

Why don't you like many others just use portupgrade or portmaster?


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## phoenix (May 7, 2010)

Because portupgrade requires /usr/ports to be installed, uses ruby, requires managing separate portsdb and pkgdb, and doesn't work very well in a packages-only situation.  Whereas pkg_upgrade doesn't require any of those, and is geared toward packages-only.

portmaster is slightly better, in that it can be configured to work without /usr/ports, using packages only.  But isn't nearly as simple to use as pkg_upgrade for package-only setups.

Finally, pkg_upgrade fits in with the rest of the pkg_* tools.

To the OP:  you may want to send an e-mail to the maintainer of the pkg_upgrade tool.  They'd be the best one to ask about this issue.


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## harishankar (May 8, 2010)

Thanks. The explanation above was quite correct.

None of the port* tools work well with a package only system. They require /usr/ports (which is not really the issue) but they always depend on the highest version which is in the ports database but they are not available as packages which lead to issues.

I am still forced to use ports for a few things like PHP because I want to configure the PHP Apache module which is not in the packaged version.


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## zeiz (May 9, 2010)

Nothing is perfect so it's up to user, like apples and oranges  
Personally I never had problems with *portupgrade* and *pkgdb*.
I'm also not a fan of building everything from ports (days long sometimes) including packages that were already built for us so i use portupgrade with -[...]*P*, or *-PP* (very rare), then *pkgdb -F* if installed packages require older versions of depends.

No clue where OP is located but I used to work for years in a 3rd world country's province where majority never seen a computer but crazy thunderstorms and just service failure powercuts were more regular than buses. I had no UPS but I got 100-120kb/s connection at quite decent price. Of course under that circumstances I wouldn't brave to use flag combination like *-afrR*


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