For some reason yesterday, as I was doing 'port selfupdate; port outdated' that is quite routine for me, I ended up with error message saying something like: port installed failed, list element ended with } instead of space (the exact wording escapes me at the moment). However, the result is that I am informed I have no ports installed! Probably I have to install all ports again from scratch, which takes time that could be used more productively and is a RPITA?! How could this kind of situation be avoided or if disaster hits, how could the ports be restored? The problem is to find all packages that are installed and active, and to find the configuration (i.e. variants) used to build them. I'd hope a new selfupdate could solve the problem, but I am not optimistic. not a happy man at the moment, ! ! Jyrki Wahlstedt ! http://www.wahlstedt.fi/jyrki/ ! ! Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one and perhaps will. ! PGP key ID: 0x139CC386 fingerprint: F355 B46F 026C B8C1 89C0 A780 6366 EFD9 139C C386