Problems with ports in FreeBSD 8.1

[kwawer]

I am maintaining one server on FreeBSD 8.1. Today I wanted to install ImageMagick on the server. I have upgraded ports, but it was a mistake. Because now when I want to make install, I receive:

make: fatal errors encountered -- cannot continue

It isn't server in a hosting company, and I don't have full access to the machine (only SSH). So upgrading the freebsd FreeBSD version is a bad choice right now.

Is there any way to fix ports in FreeBSD 8.1 or install ImageMagick in a different way? I have tried to install from source but I received the following error message:

/usr/local/lib/libX11.so: could not read symbols: Invalid operation

I will appreciate any help.

 

[fonz]

First this: Topics about unsupported FreeBSD versions.

FreeBSD 8.1 has reached End-Of-Life over two years ago. It is no longer supported, there will be very few (if any) people who still use it and it hasn't had any security updates in years either. It might be possible to install ImageMagick from the FTP Archive if it still serves binary packages, but you'll have no options to configure and it's not guaranteed to work anyway. Your best bet is still to upgrade to a more recent - and currently supported - version of FreeBSD.

 

[SirDice]

I suggest you upgrade the machine to FreeBSD 8.4. That will be supported until June 2015. Upgrading to FreeBSD 8.4 will be relatively easy, not much has changed between 8.1 and 8.4. And it will give you enough time to test your applications on FreeBSD 9.3 (supported until December 2016).

 

[kwawer]

Yes, you are right, the best option will be upgrade to 8.4 or even 9.x. But unfortunately I don't have physical access to the server every day. And upgrading a machine via SSH is very risky, because the machine could have a problem after upgrade and won't come up. But finally I should upgrade it to the latest version.

 

[SirDice]

I've upgraded lots of machines remotely without any problems but you are correct, it is somewhat risky. If you have some sort of remote console access that would be best. Ideally you need to be able to fall-back on something in case the machine gets stuck in single user mode for example.