The FreeBSD Diary

Generating DSA parameter and key.

and the box will appear to hang.  Be patient. It takes some time to generate that key. I found a message in the mailing list archives which gave me my first clue.  Apparently, it takes 20 minutes on a 486.   On my P100, it took about 10 minutes.  This delay will only occur on the first boot.  After it successfully generates the key, subsequent boots will take the usual length of time

Also note: the 4.1-STABLE fetch was broken.  It has since been fixed.  See 4.1-STABLE -fetch now going just fine for details on how I fixed my box.

The rest of this article is for interest only.  If you fetch is broken, use the above procedure to fix it.

DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS.  See the link above for fixing fetch.

But there is a work-around.  I'm using the fetch from 4.0-STABLE.  It does the job.  If you want that binary, I've made it availble here: [sorry, this file is no longer available].   If you get that file, you should

1. move it file to /usr/bin
2. cd /usr/bin
3. mv fetch fetch.doesnotwork
4. mv fetch.4.0-stable fetch

Then fetch should work.

Here are the symptoms of the broken fetch:

[dan@set:~] $ fetch http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/
                        x11-wm/icewm-i18n/pkg/DESCR?rev=1.2
Receiving DESCR?rev=1.2 (4294967295 bytes): 0%
258 bytes transferred in 0.0 seconds (115.10 kBps)
fetch: DESCR?rev=1.2 appears to be truncated: 258/4294967295 bytes
[dan@set:~] $ fetch -b http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/
                        x11-wm/icewm-i18n/pkg/DESCR?rev=1.2
fetch: warning: the -b option is deprecated
Receiving DESCR?rev=1.2 (4294967295 bytes): 0%
258 bytes transferred in 0.0 seconds (126.35 kBps)
fetch: DESCR?rev=1.2 appears to be truncated: 258/4294967295 bytes
[dan@set:~] $ fetch -t http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/
                        x11-wm/icewm-i18n/pkg/DESCR?rev=1.2
fetch: warning: the -t option is deprecated
Receiving DESCR?rev=1.2 (4294967295 bytes): 0%
258 bytes transferred in 0.0 seconds (122.37 kBps)
fetch: DESCR?rev=1.2 appears to be truncated: 258/4294967295 bytes

That's the script I used for my upgrade.  It went just fine.  Apart from the problem noted above.  I'd recommend holding off on your upgrade.