FreeBSD 15: poudriere builds fail from stale package repository metadata

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Build jobs fail unpredictably and package publication cadence slows significantly.

Environment & Reproduction

Occurs in long-running build hosts where metadata caches are not refreshed consistently.

Root Cause Analysis

Dependency resolution uses outdated package index data that conflicts with current ports state.

Quick Triage

Validate jail health, ports tree freshness, and repository index timestamps.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Audit poudriere logs and index artifacts to identify stale metadata boundary.

Solution – Primary Fix

Refresh repositories and rebuild affected sets with deterministic update ordering.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Split critical package sets into isolated queues with strict dependency pinning.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Build pipeline completes cleanly and produced package indexes match current source state.

Rollback Plan

Revert to previous package snapshot if refreshed metadata exposes unresolved breakages.

Prevention & Hardening

Automate index freshness checks and gate builds on validated repository consistency.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

Common with corrupted pkg cache and interrupted ports tree updates.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for freebsd-15.

View all freebsd-15 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

poudriere documentation, FreeBSD ports handbook, and package repository maintenance notes.