I'm unsure how you could have got into a situation whereby the
package database doesn't reflect the packages installed on a machine.
If you're talking about the various ${PKG_DBDIR} directories, they
get installed by pkg_create or pkg_add, and deleted by pkg_delete.
Have you been using FORCE_PKG_REGISTER, or using manual methods of
changing the database, or forcing deletion of packages? This is
not exactly recommended. If it's the pkg_admin db file that's out
of sync, a "pkg_admin rebuild" should sort things out.

Regards,
Alistair

On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 03:57:24AM -0600, Rick Kelly wrote:
> Lucio De Re said:
> 
> >Why should one consider pkg-install as any more special than tar?
> 
> Well, on some sun3, sparc 4/x and other boxes, sysinst just plain doesn't
> work correctly. You have to populate a NFS boot, boot from the net. and
> then do the install manually.
> 
> The pkg database format is still a work in progress. The system that I'm
> typing this on is running 1.4.3/i386. I downloaded pkgsrc to this machine
> back when it was "invented", and it was running NetBSD/i386 1.3. Since then
> the database and the tools have changed such that I can't really install
> packages any more as the database doesn't give a clear picture of what is
> installed on the system.
> 
> The system that I chase -current on also has a problematic pkg database.
> 
> I've been running NetBSD on most of my machines since NetBSD 0.9a. It works
> great and the only panics that I see are due to bad hardware. I would like to
> keep running NetBSD on all of the platforms that it supports.
> -- 
> Rick Kelly  rmk@rmkhome.com  www.rmkhome.com