Less Known pkg(8) Features

I was asked many times to write an article about pkg(8) – the current FreeBSD modern package manager sometimes also called PKGng.

In this entry I will try to describe less known pkg(8) features.

About 8 years ago – when pkg(8) did not even existed – I wrote HOWTO: Keeping FreeBSD’s Base System and Packages Up-to-Date post. It was even later published in the BSD Magazine 2012/01 episode (Issue 30).

Back in 2011 keeping packages up to date was little more tricky then it is now. You was forced to use the FreeBSD’s STABLE branch for them as packages in RELEASE were never updated – like currently it is in the OpenBSD world. The packages in FreeBSD’s STABLE branch were built every 2 weeks which was enough at that time.

You could of course compile everything from FreeBSD Ports using portmaster but you will waste lots of time for compiling your life. When pkg_add/pkg_delete/pkg_info were THE package tools on FreeBSD the pkg_upgrade script from the bsdadminscripts package was quite helpful with the upgrade process. It would fetch latest available packages from the STABLE branch FTP server and update installed packages. To check for the security issues in packages another external tools called portaudit was needed.

Today we have pkg(8) with all its features along with pkg upgrade to update the installed packages. Thanks to pkg audit the third party tool portaudit is not longer needed. We even have pkg autoremove to automatically remove unneeded dependencies.

I will try not to copy information available on the already great FreeBSD Handbook described in the 4.4. Using pkg for Binary Package Management chapter.

Older FreeBSD Versions

Before FreeBSD 10.x to use new pkg(8) tools instead of the old pkg_* ones there was need to have WITH_PKGNG=yes in the /etc/make.conf file.

Currently only the only supported releases of FreeBSD are recently released 12.0 and still more stable and polished 11.2 so there is no need to put anything in the /etc/make.conf file anymore to use pkg(8) framework.

Database

The pkg(8) database (SQLite database actually) is kept in the /var/db/pkg directory.

These are the contents of the /var/db/pkg dir just after pkg(8) bootstrap process.

# find /var/db/pkg
/var/db/pkg
/var/db/pkg/FreeBSD.meta
/var/db/pkg/vuln.xml
/var/db/pkg/local.sqlite
/var/db/pkg/repo-FreeBSD.sqlite

The most important file is the /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite file as this is the database of installed packages and its files. By typing pkg shell you can actually connect to this SQLite database with SQLite interpreter.

# pkg shell
-- Loading resources from /home/vermaden/.sqliterc
SQLite version 3.15.2 2016-11-28 19:13:37
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
> .q
#

If for some reason you will find that pkg(8) tools does not work or are broken you may connect to it with sqlite3 command from the sqlite3 package. Do not use the sqlite package as it holds the 2.x version of SQLite which is not forward compatible with the 3.x version used by pkg(8)

# file /var/db/pkg/*
/var/db/pkg/FreeBSD.meta:        ASCII text
/var/db/pkg/local.sqlite:        SQLite 3.x database, user version 34, last written using SQLite version 3015002
/var/db/pkg/repo-FreeBSD.sqlite: SQLite 3.x database, user version 2014, last written using SQLite version 3015002
/var/db/pkg/vuln.xml:            XML 1.0 document, UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines

# sqlite3 /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite
-- Loading resources from /home/vermaden/.sqliterc
SQLite version 3.26.0 2018-12-01 12:34:55
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
> .q
#

Lock/Unlock

With pkg(8) specified packages can now be locked with pkg lock command. This means that the pkg upgrade or even pkg delete operations (or pkg autoremove) would not touch them. You can list locked packages with -l options as shown below.

# pkg lock -l
Currently locked packages:
conky-1.9.0_6
exfat-utils-1.2.8
ffmpeg-4.1_1,1
fusefs-exfat-1.2.8
lame-3.100_2

# pkg delete exfat-utils
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
The following package(s) are locked and may not be removed:

        exfat-utils

1 packages requested for removal: 1 locked, 0 missing
# 

As you can see its not possible to pkg delete the locked exfat-utils package. You will first have to unlock it with pkg unlock command. You can do that interactively or not with -y option as shown below.

# pkg unlock exfat-utils
exfat-utils-1.2.8: unlock this package? [y/N]: y
Unlocking exfat-utils-1.2.8

# pkg lock -y exfat-utils
Locking exfat-utils-1.2.8

Now, why would you lock any packages?

Based on my experience these are potential reasons to lock certain packages:

• You combine packages with ports.
• Package for the port does not exist.
• Official package has different default options then yours.
• You really want to use older version of package.

Actually I use lock/unlock mechanism because all of the above are true for me.

I combine ports and packages (practice often discouraged in the FreeBSD world) because some software I use is not available as packages – because of licensing issues. These are anything related to Microsoft exFAT filesystem (exfat-utils/fusefs-exfat) and MP3 (lame). What is more astonishing for me is that OpenBSD provides lame package since YEARS yet FreeBSD team is still scared of the patents. I also need to build custom version of ffmpeg package – just to include lame support but still custom. The last thing I keep locked is Conky. It was and still is working great in 1.9 version but its developers broke it badly in the 1.10 version (now even 1.11 is available). It was just not possible to right click with mouse on the desktop and have Openbox menu – or to name the issue – Conky did not pass mouse events to the Window Manager that ruled the desktop. So I used one of the other Ports tools, the portdowngrade to fetch last 1.9 files into my Ports tree, then compile the 1.9 conky package and lock it for good.

You probably already know that I prefer to run dzen2 for screen information but I use conky rarely for my ‘FreeBSD Dashboard’ with all needed information that I enable only when I need it – with [Scroll Lock] key.

For the record – here is how it looks.

Provides

If you also happen to be RHEL/Fedora (or just yum/rpm) user you probably missed the ‘provides’ feature on FreeBSD pkg(8) package manager. Why it is so useful? Because with ‘provides’ database you can install packages by specifying the exact binary or file name of the package. For example You can type yum install /sbin/ifconfig to install net-tools package because ‘provides’ database will have that needed information.

What if I tell you that You can achieve similar functionality with pkg(8) tool?

The pkg-provides plugin allows you to query which package provides a particular file directly with pkg(8) tool.

It is even available as pkg-provides package. Below I will show you how to install and configure it. First install the pkg-provides package.

# pkg search provides
pkg-provides-0.5.0             Pkg plugin for querying which package provides a particular file

# pkg install pkg-provides
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
        pkg-provides: 0.5.0 [FreeBSD]

Number of packages to be installed: 1

10 KiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[1/1] Fetching pkg-provides-0.5.0.txz: 100%   10 KiB   9.8kB/s    00:01    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[1/1] Installing pkg-provides-0.5.0...
[1/1] Extracting pkg-provides-0.5.0: 100%
Message from pkg-provides-0.5.0:

======================= pkg plugin activation ========================
  In order to use the pkg-provides plugin you need to enable plugins in pkg.
  To do this, uncomment the following lines in /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf file
  and add pkg-provides to the supported plugin list

  PKG_PLUGINS_DIR = "/usr/local/lib/pkg/";
  PKG_ENABLE_PLUGINS = true;
  PLUGINS [ provides ];

  After that run `pkg plugins' to see the plugins handled by pkg`.

  To update the provides database run `pkg provides -u`

  ====================================================================

Then configure the /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf file.

# cat << __EOF__ >> /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf
PKG_PLUGINS_DIR = "/usr/local/lib/pkg/";
PKG_ENABLE_PLUGINS = true;
PLUGINS [ provides ];
__EOF__

Now you have new command called pkg provides as shown below.

# pkg provides
usage: pkg provides [-uf] pattern

A plugin for querying which package provides a particular file

# pkg provides bin/pldd
Provides database not found, please update first.

You can update the ‘provides’ database with -u option.

# pkg provides -u
Fetching provides database: 100%   29 MiB 700.9kB/s    00:43    
Extracting database....success

Example usage of pkg provides plugin.

# pkg provides bin/pldd
Name    : ptools2-0.5
Desc    : Toolset based on Solaris ptools functionality
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: /usr/local/bin/pldd

Name    : linux_base-c7-7.4.1708_6
Desc    : Base set of packages needed in Linux mode (Linux CentOS 7.4.1708)
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: /compat/linux/usr/bin/pldd

# pkg install /compat/linux/usr/bin/pldd
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
pkg: No packages available to install matching '/compat/linux/usr/bin/pldd' have been found in the repositories

Althou its not possible to for example install linux_base-c7 package by typing pkg install /compat/linux/usr/bin/pldd command its possible to check which package contains that file.

Next time you will type the pkg upgrade command you would also see provides database updating

# pkg upgrade
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.txz: 100%    944 B   0.9kB/s    00:01    
Fetching packagesite.txz: 100%    6 MiB 376.5kB/s    00:18    
Processing entries: 100%
Fetching provides database: 100%   29 MiB 386.3kB/s    01:18    
Extracting database....success
FreeBSD repository update completed. 32542 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
(...)

The pkg provides database takes some notable space in the /var/db/pkg directory.

# file /var/db/pkg/* /var/db/pkg/*/* | sort -n
/var/db/pkg/FreeBSD.meta: ASCII text
/var/db/pkg/local.sqlite: SQLite 3.x database, user version 34, last written using SQLite version 3015002
/var/db/pkg/provides: directory
/var/db/pkg/provides/provides.db: ASCII text
/var/db/pkg/repo-FreeBSD.sqlite: SQLite 3.x database, user version 2014, last written using SQLite version 3015002
/var/db/pkg/vuln.xml: XML 1.0 document, UTF-8 Unicode text, with very long lines

If you use ZFS compression like LZ4 then it will not take much as shown below.

# du -csm /var/db/pkg/*
1       /var/db/pkg/FreeBSD.meta
32      /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite
72      /var/db/pkg/provides
33      /var/db/pkg/repo-FreeBSD.sqlite
2       /var/db/pkg/vuln.xml
138     total

… but if You use UFS then that almost 600 MB database may scare you a little 🙂

# du -csmA /var/db/pkg/*
1       /var/db/pkg/FreeBSD.meta
68      /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite
571     /var/db/pkg/provides
52      /var/db/pkg/repo-FreeBSD.sqlite
6       /var/db/pkg/vuln.xml
694     total

Which

While the pkg provides needed information for the files of packages that are not yet installed the pkg which command is the pkg(8) equivalent of the classic UNIX which command. It shows to which package a file belongs to (or not at all).

# pkg which /boot/modules/drm.ko
/boot/modules/drm.ko was installed by package drm-fbsd11.2-kmod-4.11g20181210

# pkg which /boot/kernel/drm.ko
/boot/kernel/drm.ko was not found in the database

Double Your Gun Double Your Fun

Sometimes its faster to use both ‘whiches’ at the same time to get the needed answer.

# which firefox
/usr/local/bin/firefox

# pkg which `which firefox`
/usr/local/bin/firefox was installed by package firefox-64.0.2,1

Periodic

It may happen that you will see something like that one below.

# pkg install parallel
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
pkg: Cannot get an advisory lock on a database, it is locked by another process

… but You did not launched any other pkg(8) instances, what is going on here? Lets check the ps(1) output.

# ps ax | grep pkg
 8540  -  S        0:00.00 /bin/sh - /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/411.pkg-backup
 8551  -  S        0:00.00 /usr/local/sbin/pkg shell .dump
 8555  -  D        0:01.08 /usr/local/sbin/pkg shell .dump

The FreeBSD’s periodic scripts are doing their job.

To check which are they look here.

# find /etc/periodic /usr/local/etc/periodic -name \*pkg\*
/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/490.status-pkg-changes
/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/411.pkg-backup
/usr/local/etc/periodic/security/460.pkg-checksum
/usr/local/etc/periodic/security/410.pkg-audit
/usr/local/etc/periodic/weekly/400.status-pkg

If You think that any of those activities are not needed then you may disable them with these values in the /etc/periodic.conf file.

# find /etc/periodic /usr/local/etc/periodic -name \*pkg\* | xargs grep -m 1 -E -o "[a-z_]+_enable" 
/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/490.status-pkg-changes:daily_status_pkgng_changes_enable
/usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/411.pkg-backup:daily_backup_pkgng_enable
/usr/local/etc/periodic/security/460.pkg-checksum:security_status_pkgchecksum_enable
/usr/local/etc/periodic/security/410.pkg-audit:security_status_pkgaudit_enable
/usr/local/etc/periodic/weekly/400.status-pkg:weekly_status_pkgng_enable

For example if you would like to disable the /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily/490.status-pkg-changes execution you will need to add daily_status_pkgng_changes_enable=yes into the /etc/periodic.conf file.

Lefs chack again for the ps(1) output then.

# ps ax | grep pkg
 8574  0  S+       0:00.00 grep --color pkg

The periodic job has already finished. You may now install your package as usual.

# pkg install parallel
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
        parallel: 20171222

Number of packages to be installed: 1

The process will require 3 MiB more space.
1 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: n
# 

Stats

While the pkg stats command provides some stats on the installed packages its not that useful to find which packages take most space.

# pkg stats
Local package database:
        Installed packages: 1081
        Disk space occupied: 9 GiB

Remote package database(s):
        Number of repositories: 1
        Packages available: 32518
        Unique packages: 32518
        Total size of packages: 78 GiB

There is also pkg size command that will only display space used by packages but without package name … not very useful.

# pkg size | head
10.5MiB
2.06MiB
27.4MiB
2.59MiB
5.17MiB
515KiB
23.2MiB
609KiB
587KiB
127KiB

Also the man page for pkg size does not exist.

# man pkg-size
No manual entry for pkg-size

You can use pkg info -as command but it will not only not sort its output in any way – it will also display the space usage in various units like KiB/MiB/GiB which does not help … fortunatelly -h option of sort comes with help.

Using following alias you can sort packages by its space usage. I limited the output to 20 largest packages but feel free to change it to your needs.

# alias pkg-size='pkg info -as | sort -k 2 -h | tail -20 | column -t'
# which pkg-size
pkg-size: aliased to pkg info -as | sort -k 2 -h | tail -20 | column -t
# pkg-size
python27-2.7.15          68.2MiB
gtk3-3.22.30_4           68.8MiB
opencollada-1.6.68_1     75.8MiB
py27-ansible-2.7.5       88.6MiB
argyllcms-1.9.2_4        92.4MiB
webkit2-gtk3-2.22.5      92.9MiB
gimp-app-2.10.8_1,1      95.4MiB
python36-3.6.8           104MiB
samba47-4.7.12           145MiB
openjdk8-8.192.26_3      162MiB
boost-libs-1.69.0        163MiB
thunderbird-60.4.0_1     167MiB
firefox-64.0.2,1         174MiB
binutils-2.30_7,1        195MiB
linux_base-c6-6.10       197MiB
gcc6-6.5.0_3             241MiB
chromium-71.0.3578.98_2  251MiB
libreoffice-6.0.7_4      353MiB
virtualbox-ose-5.2.22_2  375MiB
llvm60-6.0.1_5           818MiB

Short Names

The pkg(8) tools also support short names for the arguments. For example you do not have to type pkg autoremove. Only the pkg autor part is needed for the command to work.

Example short names blow.

# pkg autor
# pkg upg
# pkg inf

Metadata

Many problems with pkg(8) are triggered by old metadata database. In case you face any pkg(8) issue first update (forcefully) its database as shown below.

# pkg update -f
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
Fetching meta.txz: 100%    944 B   0.9kB/s    00:01    
Fetching packagesite.txz: 100%    6 MiB 352.9kB/s    00:19    
Processing entries: 100%
Fetching provides database: 100%   28 MiB 658.3kB/s    00:44    
Extracting database....success
FreeBSD repository update completed. 31778 packages processed.
All repositories are up to date.

For the record – the ‘provides’ database is also updated in such process.

Fixing Broken Dependency

There was time when one missing dependency about vulnerable www/libxul19 package started to torture me for some time.

I was even despered to compile everything with portmaster already.

I started with portmaster --check-depends command, but said no ‘n‘ when asked for fix as it will downgrade a lot of packages needlessly.

# portmaster --check-depends
(...)
Checking dependencies: evince
graphics/evince has a missing dependency: www/libxul19
(...)

>>> Missing package dependencies were detected.
>>> Found 1 issue(s) in total with your package database.

The following packages will be installed:

        Downgrading perl: 5.14.2_3 -> 5.14.2_2
        Downgrading glib: 2.34.3 -> 2.28.8_5
        Downgrading gio-fam-backend: 2.34.3 -> 2.28.8_1
        Downgrading libffi: 3.0.12 -> 3.0.11
        Downgrading gobject-introspection: 1.34.2 -> 0.10.8_3
        Downgrading atk: 2.6.0 -> 2.0.1
        Downgrading gdk-pixbuf2: 2.26.5 -> 2.23.5_3
        Downgrading pango: 1.30.1 -> 1.28.4_1
        Downgrading gtk-update-icon-cache: 2.24.17 -> 2.24.6_1
        Downgrading dbus: 1.6.8 -> 1.4.14_4
        Downgrading gtk: 2.24.17 -> 2.24.6_2
        Downgrading dbus-glib: 0.100.1 -> 0.94
        Installing libxul: 1.9.2.28_1

The installation will require 66 MB more space

38 MB to be downloaded

>>> Try to fix the missing dependencies [y/N]: n
>>> Summary of actions performed:

www/libxul19 dependency failed to be fixed

>>> There are still missing dependencies.
>>> You are advised to try fixing them manually.

>>> Also make sure to check 'pkg updating' for known issues.

Lets see what pkg(8) shows we have installed.

# pkg info | grep libxul
libxul-10.0.12                 Mozilla runtime package that can be used to bootstrap XUL+XPCOM apps

# pkg info -qoa | grep libxul
www/libxul

So the problem is that we have installed www/libxul instead of www/libxul19 and that is why portmaster (and not only) complains about it.

Before pkg(8) was introduced it was easy just to grep -r the entire /var/db/pkg directory with its ‘file database’ but now its quite more complicated as the package database is kept in SQLite database. Using pkg shell command You can connect to that database. Lets check what we can find there.

# pkg shell
SQLite version 3.7.13 2012-06-11 02:05:22
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> .databases
seq  name             file
---  ---------------  ----------------------------------------------------------
0    main             /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite
sqlite> .tables
categories       licenses         pkg_directories  scripts
deps             mtree            pkg_groups       shlibs
directories      options          pkg_licenses     users
files            packages         pkg_shlibs
groups           pkg_categories   pkg_users
sqlite> .header on
sqlite> .mode column
sqlite> pragma table_info(deps);
cid         name        type        notnull     dflt_value  pk
----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------  ----------
0           origin      TEXT        1                       1
1           name        TEXT        1                       0
2           version     TEXT        1                       0
3           package_id  INTEGER     0                       1
sqlite> .quit

So now we know that ‘deps‘ table is probably what we are looking for ;).

As pkg shell is quite limited for SQLite ‘browsing’ I will use the sqlite3 command itself. By limited I mean that You can not type pkg shell "select * from deps;" query, You first need to start pkg shell and then You can type your query.

# sqlite3 -column /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite "select * from deps;" | grep libxul
www/libxul19   libxul      1.9.2.28_1  104

The second column is name so lets try to use it.

sqlite3 -header -column /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite "select * from deps where name='libxul';"
origin        name        version     package_id
------------  ----------  ----------  ----------
www/libxul19  libxul      1.9.2.28_1  104

So now we have the ‘problematic’ dependency entry nailed, lets modify it a little to the real installed packages state.

# sqlite3 /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite "update deps set origin='www/libxul' where name='libxul';"
# sqlite3 /var/db/pkg/local.sqlite "update deps set version='10.0.12' where name='libxul';"

You can of course use the ‘official’ way by using the pkg shell command.

# pkg shell
SQLite version 3.7.13 2012-06-11 02:05:22
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> update deps set origin='www/libxul' where name='libxul';
sqlite> update deps set version='10.0.12' where name='libxul';
sqlite> .header on
sqlite> .mode column
sqlite> select * from deps where name='libxul';
origin      name        version     package_id
----------  ----------  ----------  ----------
www/libxul  libxul      10.0.12     104
sqlite> .quit

Now portmaster is happy and does not complain about any missing dependencies.

# portmaster --check-depends
(...)
Checking dependencies: zenity
Checking dependencies: zip
Checking dependencies: zsh
# 

Viola! Problem solved 😉

… but pkg(8) has a tool for that already 🙂

Its called pkg set and two most useful options from man pkg-set are.

  -n oldname:newname, --change-name oldname:newname
       Change the package name of a given dependency from oldname to newname.

(...)

  -o oldorigin:neworigin, --change-origin oldorigin:neworigin
       Change the port origin of a given dependency from oldorigin to neworigin.
       This corresponds to the port directory that the package originated from.
       Typically, this is only needed for upgrading a library or package that
       has MOVED or when the default version of a major port dependency changes.
       (DEPRECATED) Usually this will be explained in /usr/ports/UPDATING.
       Also see pkg-updating(8) and EXAMPLES.

In our case we would use pkg set -o www/libxul19:www/libxul command.

Not sure if it will solve that problem in the same way as I also updated the version in the database.

UPDATING

If you get into any trouble with the pkg upgrade command then you should also check latest version of the /usr/ports/UPDATING file – available after updating the Ports tree with portsnap fetch update command for example.

It describes what important has changed in Ports (and packages as packages are built from Ports).

# less /usr/ports/UPDATING

(...)
20180518:
  AFFECTS: users of sysutils/ansible*
  AUTHOR: lifanov@FreeBSD.org

  Ansible ports are now flavored. Package names for Ansible changed
  to include python version. Poudriere and package users don't need
  to do anything.

  To rename an installed package to match the new naming scheme,
  for example, for ansible24, run:

   # pkg set -n ansible24:py27-ansible24

(...)

20180214:
  AFFECTS: users of lang/ruby23
  AUTHOR: swills@FreeBSD.org

  The default ruby version has been updated from 2.3 to 2.4.

  If you compile your own ports you may keep 2.3 as the default version by
  adding the following lines to your /etc/make.conf file:

  #
  # Keep ruby 2.3 as default version
  #
  DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=ruby=2.3

  If you wish to update to the new default version, you need to first stop any
  software that uses ruby. Then, you will need to follow these steps, depending
  upon how you manage your system.

  If you use pkgng, simply upgrade:
  # pkg upgrade

  If you use portmaster, install new ruby, then rebuild all ports that depend
  on ruby:
  # portmaster -o lang/ruby24 lang/ruby23
  # portmaster -R -r ruby-2.4

  If you use portupgrade, install new ruby, then rebuild all ports that depend
  on ruby:

  # pkg delete -f ruby portupgrade
  # make -C /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade install clean
  # pkg set -o lang/ruby23:lang/ruby24
  # portupgrade -x ruby-2.4.\* -fr lang/ruby24

(...)

The pkg(8) framework also has a tool for that with pkg updating command. Check man pkg-updating page for details. The most common use case would be using the -d argument with date as shown below.

# pkg updating -d 20190101
20190103:
  AFFECTS: users of multimedia/vlc*
  AUTHOR: riggs@FreeBSD.org

  The multimedia/vlc port has been upgraded to 3.0.5, the latest upstream
  release. Subsequently, multimedia/vlc-qt4 and multimedia/vlc3 have been
  retired and removed from the ports tree. Users who previously used
  multimedia/vlc3 might want to switch to multimedia/vlc with the following
  commands:

  # pkg install multimedia/vlc
    or
  # portmaster -o multimedia/vlc multimedia/vlc3
    or
  # portupgrade -o multimedia/vlc multimedia/vlc3

You may as well check the UPDATING file online at the https://www.freshports.org/UPDATING address.

Bulletproof Upgrades with ZFS Boot Environments

To be absolutely sure that you will have a working system no matter what will went wrong with the pkg upgrade command just use the ZFS Boot Environments. I have made talks in Poland at PBUG and in Netherlands at NLUUG about its features not so long ago. The latest PDF presentation is still available at the https://is.gd/BECTL link.

The procedure with beadm command looks like that.

# beadm create safepoint
Created successfully

# beadm list
BE           Active Mountpoint  Space Created
11.2-RELEASE NR     /            5.7G 2018-12-01 13:09
safepoint    -      -          316.0K 2019-01-16 23:03

# pkg upgrade

Now if anything wrong will not happen You still have fully working system under the safepoint boot environment name.

Just reboot into it (select it in the FreeBSD loader) and you are back with working system, like you would be back in time with time machine.

Query

You can also use pkg query command to seek for intormation you need.

For example to ’emulate’ the pkg info -r pkg-name argument which displays the list of packages which require pkg-name you can use pkg query command as shown below.

# pkg info -r sqlite3
sqlite3-3.26.0:
        colord-gtk-0.1.26
        py27-sqlite3-2.7.15_7
        freeciv-2.5.10
        colord-1.3.5
        libsoup-2.62.3
        libsoup-gnome-2.62.3
        subversion-1.11.0_1
        nss-3.41_1
        webkit-gtk2-2.4.11_19
        filezilla-3.36.0_1
        epiphany-3.28.5_1
        darktable-2.4.4_3
        aria2-1.34.0_1
        webkit2-gtk3-2.22.5
        qt5-webkit-5.212.0.a2_17
        qt5-sqldrivers-sqlite3-5.12.0
        hugin-2018.0.0_6
        pidgin-2.13.0
        thunderbird-60.4.0_1
        midori-0.7.0
        firefox-64.0.2,1

# pkg query -e '%n = sqlite3' %ro
graphics/colord-gtk
databases/py-sqlite3
games/freeciv
graphics/colord
devel/libsoup
devel/libsoup-gnome
devel/subversion
security/nss
www/webkit-gtk2
ftp/filezilla
www/epiphany
graphics/darktable
www/aria2
www/webkit2-gtk3
www/qt5-webkit
databases/qt5-sqldrivers-sqlite3
graphics/hugin
net-im/pidgin
mail/thunderbird
www/midori
www/firefox

If you would like to know when each package was installed for the first time then use this spell below.

# pkg query "%t %n-%v" \
    | sort -n \
    | while read timestamp pkgname
      do
        echo "$(date -r $timestamp) $pkgname"
      done | ( head; echo; tail )
Fri Jul  7 14:17:29 CEST 2017 libpciaccess-0.13.5
Fri Jul  7 14:17:35 CEST 2017 libedit-3.1.20170329_2,1
Fri Jul  7 14:18:09 CEST 2017 font-util-1.3.1
Fri Jul  7 14:18:10 CEST 2017 xcb-util-0.4.0_2,1
Fri Jul  7 15:26:56 CEST 2017 xcb-util-renderutil-0.3.9_1
Fri Jul  7 15:26:57 CEST 2017 dejavu-2.37
Fri Jul  7 15:27:00 CEST 2017 font-misc-meltho-1.0.3_3
Fri Jul  7 15:27:02 CEST 2017 font-misc-ethiopic-1.0.3_3
Fri Jul  7 15:27:06 CEST 2017 font-bh-ttf-1.0.3_3
Fri Jul  7 15:27:08 CEST 2017 tpm-emulator-0.7.4_2

Sun Jan 13 20:48:01 CET 2019 firefox-64.0.2,1
Sun Jan 13 20:48:01 CET 2019 htop-2.2.0_1
Wed Jan 16 23:08:21 CET 2019 vlc-3.0.6,4
Wed Jan 16 23:08:21 CET 2019 xdg-utils-1.1.3
Wed Jan 16 23:08:25 CET 2019 phonon-qt4-4.10.2
Wed Jan 16 23:08:25 CET 2019 physfs-3.0.1
Wed Jan 16 23:08:25 CET 2019 py27-pyasn1-0.4.5
Wed Jan 16 23:08:26 CET 2019 chromium-71.0.3578.98_2
Wed Jan 16 23:08:26 CET 2019 moreutils-0.63
Wed Jan 16 23:08:26 CET 2019 p5-URI-1.76

You can also display packages that will not be removed by pkg autoremove command because You installed them directly.

# pkg query -e "%a != 1" "%n" | tail
xmp
xorg
xprintidle
xterm
xxkb
youtube_dl
zenity
zfs-stats
zip
zsh

Rosetta Stone

The FreeBSD Wiki page also provides some table but the information is incomplete.

Thus I copied the table and filled the missing data.

Below you will find the updated Rosetta Stone between old pkg_* tools compared to current pkg(8) framework.

Function	Old pkg_* Tools	New pkg(8) Tools
List of installed packages.	pkg_info	pkg info
Basic info about package.	pkg_info pkgname-pkgversion	pkg info pkgname pkg info category/name pkg info pkgname-pkgversion
Detailed info about package.	N/A	pkg info -f pkgname pkg info -f category/name pkg info -f pkgname-pkgversion
List all files in installed package.	pkg_info -L pkgname-pkgversion	pkg info -l pkgname pkg info -l category/name pkg info -l pkgname-pkgversion
Find which package provides file.	pkg_info -W /path/to/my/file	pkg which /path/to/my/file
Install local package.	pkg_add ./localpkg.tbz	pkg add ./localpkg.txz
Install remote package.	pkg_add -r mypackage	pkg install mypackage pkg install category/name pkg install pkgname-pkgversion
Search for remote package.	ls /usr/ports/* | grep mypackage	pkg search mypackage pkg search category/name pkg search pkgname-pkgversion
Search for detailed info about remote package.	make search name=mypackage make search key=mypackage	pkg search -f mypackage pkg search -f category/name pkg search -f pkgname-pkgversion
Reverse deps of installed package.	pkg_info -R pkgname-pkgversion	pkg info -r mypackage pkg info -r category/name pkg info -r pkgname-pkgversion
Deps of installed package.	pkg_info -r pkgname-pkgversion	pkg info -d mypackage pkg info -d category/name pkg info -d pkgname-pkgversion
Remove unused packages install as dep.	N/A	pkg autoremove
Binary upgrade installed packages.	pkg_upgrade (FreeBSD Ports)	pkg upgrade
Create remote repository.	N/A	pkg repo /directory/with/packages
Manipulate packages in jail.	N/A	pkg -j
Manipulate packages in chroot.	pkg_add -C	pkg -c
Info about installed packages using RE.	pkg_info -x	pkg info -x
Info about installed packages using extended RE.	pkg_info -X	pkg info -X
Info about installed packages using globbing.	pkg_info	pkg info -g
Check for known vulnerabilities.	portaudit (FreeBSD Ports)	pkg audit
Out of date packages.	pkg_version -l <	pkg version -l <
Out of date packages.	pkg_version -Il <	pkg version -Il <
Out of date packages compared to remote repo.	N/A	pkg upgrade -n
Statistic about installed packages.	N/A	pkg stat
Checking for missing dependency (with fix).	N/A	pkg check -d
Port origin.	pkg_info -o	pkg info -o

If you know any other useful pkg(8) spells then let me know 🙂

EOF