I think your pkgsrc/.index is incomplete. There was a problem with
   graphics/blender, which made index creation kill itself or archs for
   which blender is not supported. This was fixed yesterday. Check the
   output of "sh mk/bulk/printindex" to verify if this is indeed what is
   making your build lose.

Yes, the problem was an incomplete .index file (though not due to
graphics/blender problems).  I was getting the following messages
early in the bulk build process:

     Generating package name <=> package directory cross reference file (this may take a while)...
     "Makefile", line 47: Could not find ../../devel/boehm-gc/buildlink.mk
     "Makefile", line 50: Could not find ../../net/adns/buildlink.mk
     "Makefile", line 53: Could not find ../../mk/bsd.pkg.install.mk
     Fatal errors encountered -- cannot continue
     ERROR: printindex could not extract PKNAME for chat/gale

After getting a new copy of pkgsrc (26 Nov 2001), those errors
disappeared.  However, they were replaced by equivalent errors for the
following packages:

	  archivers/p5-Archive-Zip
	  sysutils/ups-nut-cgi

Again, I got a truncated .index file.  However, after commenting out
these two in archivers/Makefile and sysutils/Makefile, the bulk build
seems to be progressing fine.

What can be done to make printindex more robust to this failure mode?

Anyway, thanks for pointing out the basic cause.  At least now I can
work around the problem somewhat.

Cheers,
Brook