poudriere-jail(8) and pkgbase: FreeBSD-base package cache accumulation

[grahamperrin]

To freebsd-pkgbase@ yesterday:

• FYI: pkg clean with FreeBSD-base disabled cleans out even installed FreeBSD-* base packages from the cache

Mark Millard's email reminds me of a possible issue with poudriere, which I found long ago (a few months after pkgbase became a method for poudriere-jail(8)).

Possible issue

If I recall correctly:

• the -A subcommand of poudriere-pkgclean(8) does not clean base packages.

Background

Free space was mysteriously exhausted on a very large volume that was used for (amongst other things) the cache.

---

I never reported it as an issue here in GitHub, because I assumed that I was overlooking a feature (my uses of poudriere were very basic, non-expert).

I did write about the symptom, more than once. I can't find a record of what I wrote (sorry), which might mean that I wrote to a freebsd-*@ list.

[markmi]

FYI: One of my standard types of commands after updating a pkgbased poudriere jail via -u use is the likes of:

# pkg-static -c /usr/local/poudriere/jails/JAILNAME clean

(My poudriere jails do not involve qemu based cross building and I do these activities as root, both inside and outside the jail. But I do have examples of armv7 on aarch64 and i386 on amd64 . A more general procedure would likely use -r ROOTDIR and other options controlling file paths to be in the referenced area without involving chroot or the like.)

It does seem that such would be better as automatic behavior.

[bdrewery]

I don't think poudriere pkgclean should be touching pkgbase packages. Poudriere doesn't own them; poudriere bulk didn't create them. It's a poudriere jail thing.

[grahamperrin]

Thanks, I edited the title here.

[markmi]

I don't think poudriere pkgclean should be touching pkgbase packages. Poudriere doesn't own them; poudriere bulk didn't create them. It's a poudriere jail thing.

An issue is that pkg-static clean (or pkg clean) does not respect any base-package vs. ports-package distinction for its activity: it cleans both. For it, a package is just a package. pkg-static clean does not have any REPONAME command line options either. So any poudriere jail use of pkg-static clean could clean port-packages in the jail's /var/cache/pkg/ too if poudriere used such a command. Similarly, if poudriere pkgclean used pkg-static clean it could also clean base-packages in the jails /var/cache/pkg/ . Disabling any repositories via .conf files leads to more potential cleanout, not less. Enabling repositories tends to clean out less, preserving what is enabled.

For most usage, the involvement of /var/cache/pkg/ is a non-obvious internal detail, making manual clean-out not a natural option.

(14 and before uses old REPONAMing conventions (14 having some new ones); 15 and later use new REPONAMing conventions. 13 and before do not have base packages at all.)