Package installation on FreeBSD versions older than 9.3 fails with error “No active remote repositories configured.”

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on how to install VMware Tools on FreeBSD versions older than 9.3 need perl, compat6x-i386 or compat6x-amd64 pre- installed.

Symptoms:
During package installation like perl, compat6x-i386 or compat6x-amd64 on FreeBSD versions older than 9.3, fails with error “No active remote repositories configured.”

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.x - View

Cause

Since FreeBSD community ended support for FreeBSD 8.3, 8.4, 9.1 and 9.2, users would get an error like the following one when trying to install required packages with pkg before VMware Tools installation,prompts error as "No active remote repositories configured".

Resolution

To resolve this issue, change the default set binary .txz packages repository.

1.  Log into SSH client or terminal session.
2. Create and save this contents to FreeBSD.conf file.

       #mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
       Create the file /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf with:
       #vi /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
       FreeBSD: {
       url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest",
       mirror_type: "srv",
       enabled: yes

 

3. Install the required packages for VMware Tools: 

#pkg install perl5
#ln -s /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl
(optional if perl version > 5.18 or perl gets installed under /usr/local/bin by default)
#pkg install compat6x-i386
or
#pkg install compat6x-amd64