# Bsdtar and ports problem



## Llyn0 (May 5, 2018)

Hi everyone.

I've run into strange problem with an old release 

```
# uname -mrs
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE amd64
```
I am new in maintenance of bsd-like systems so I simply followed tutorials from freebsd.org. I tried to retrieve the ports collection as they said (in order to install xtrabackup). `portsnap fetch` done fine: 

```
# portsnap fetch
Looking up portsnap.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 6 mirrors found.
Fetching snapshot tag from ec2-eu-west-1.portsnap.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching snapshot metadata... done.
Updating from Fri Apr 27 18:52:46 MSK 2018 to Sat May  5 11:21:44 MSK 2018.
Fetching 5 metadata patches... done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 4 metadata files... done.
Fetching 1125 patches...
...
Applying patches... done.
Fetching 104 new ports or files... done.
```
But when I tried to run `portsnap update` result was unexpected:

```
# portsnap update
/usr/ports was not created by portsnap.
You must run 'portsnap extract' before running 'portsnap update'.
```
And `portsnap extract` suddenly failed with

```
# portsnap extract
/usr/ports/.arcconfig
/usr/bin/bsdtar: Cannot fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
/usr/ports/.gitattributes
/usr/bin/bsdtar: Cannot fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
/usr/ports/.gitauthors
/usr/bin/bsdtar: Cannot fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
```
and so on.

More than that, I don't see either bsdtar or tar installed and when trying to install got:

```
# pkg_info | grep bsdtar
# pkg_info | grep tar
#

# pkg install bsdtar
pkg: not found
# pkg install tar
pkg: not found
```

Any suggestions what should I do? The server has living sites and backup must be done before any upgrade/reinstall.


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## fernandel (May 5, 2018)

Unsuported releases


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## marino (May 5, 2018)

sounds like you're out of memory or file descriptors or something.  If you reboot, I'm betting portsnap works again.


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## SirDice (May 7, 2018)

FreeBSD 8.3 has been end of life since April 2014 (almost 4 years!) and is not supported any more. The ports system doesn't support 8.x any more, the old pkg_add tools and their packages have been deprecated a couple of years ago. And PKGNG packages for 8.x are not created. 

Topics about unsupported FreeBSD versions

In short, build a new server with a supported version and migrate the data.


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## Llyn0 (May 13, 2018)

Thank everyone who's responded. Looks like I've got no choice but yield to the SirDice's advice, as I've investigated file descriptors and memory usage of the system and it was OK, no resource shortage found.


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