General guidelines to fixing something that broke

[launchcodemexico]

I'm new to FreeBSD, and I was following the tutorial http://www.bmichelsen.no/blog/2012/01/28/configuring-freebsd-for-x60s/ to install FreeBSD on my x60s, and I've run across some problems with programs breaking. One instance I installed the Ruby Command-T extension and it broke Vim for me; something was no longer found. Another time, X-windows was humming along perfectly until I either compiled Firefox, or force killed it in tty0 with a ctrl-C as root; and now some file called libpixman-1.9.so is missing.

What are the general rules or steps to follow for "re-installing" or backtracking to some previous state where I can make another more-or-less clean attempt, under different choices?

 

[vanessa]

Make one or both of these:

1. update your ports with portmaster following the procedure at the end of the man page portmaster(8)
2. install your FreeBSD on a ZFS filesystem and make snapshots

 

[jb_fvwm2]

I posted a libpixman-1.9.so workaround (not generally advised but useful in this instance maybe) in another thread recently; but being as this is FreeBSD, one can also depend upon multiple programs for some usage, and if one temporarily breaks during upgrade, simply use another while the fixes proceed at a more leisurely pace. [ Similar, yesterday mc newly requires libssh, so I deinstalled it and used misc/mc-light for the upgrade. ] And of course, backups; I've had disks fail during the backup, so have more than one backup source continually present (using rsync )

 

[SirDice]

Just try to rebuild everything that depends on x11/pixman; portmaster -r x11/pixman.

 

[wblock@]

That tutorial does use portsnap(8), but it does not mention the importance of reading the special configuration notes in /usr/ports/UPDATING. Please see Upgrading FreeBSD Ports.