Installing MacPorts failed with "This package is meant to be installed on Mac OS X 10.6.."

[phoetmail@…]

I completely removed my old mac-ports version and I could not re-install a new one.

The installation always failed with:

"This package is meant to be installed on Mac OS X 10.6.."

Checking the logs indicated something strange:

/var/log/install.log

Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: @(#)PROGRAM:Install  PROJECT:Install-574
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: @(#)PROGRAM:Installer  PROJECT:Installer-430.1
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Hardware: MacBook5,1 @ 2.40 GHz (x 2), 4096 MB RAM
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Running OS Build: Mac OS X 10.6.2 (10C540)
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: PATH=/usr/local/bin
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: TMPDIR=/var/folders/au/aubQWp4kGuurBgQEusfkvE+++TI/-Tmp-/
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: SHELL=/bin/bash
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: HOME=/Users/peterschroder
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: USER=peterschroder
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: LOGNAME=peterschroder
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: RUBYOPT=rubygems
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: DISPLAY=/tmp/launch-ARBRb1/:0
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/launch-f9EWST/Listeners
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/tmp/launch-TbuyEg/Render
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: COMMAND_MODE=unix2003
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Env: __CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0:3
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: MacPorts-1.8.2  Installation Log
Jan  7 13:49:15 Macintosh Installer[925]: Opened from: /Users/peterschroder/Desktop/MacPorts-1.8.2.pkg
Jan  7 13:49:17 Macintosh Installer[925]: Installation checks failed.
Jan  7 13:49:17 Macintosh Installer[925]: Installation check failure.  MacPorts-1.8.2 kann nicht auf diesem Computer installiert werden.. This package is meant to be installed on Mac OS X 10.6..

/var/log/system.log

Jan  7 13:49:11 Macintosh com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.InternetSharing): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
Jan  7 13:49:16 Macintosh [0x0-0x7a07a].com.apple.installer[925]: /usr/local/bin
Jan  7 13:49:16 Macintosh [0x0-0x7a07a].com.apple.installer[925]: /bin/bash
Jan  7 13:49:16 Macintosh [0x0-0x7a07a].com.apple.installer[925]: /Users/peterschroder/Desktop/MacPorts-1.8.2.pkg/Contents/Resources/InstallationCheck: line 13: uname: command not found
Jan  7 13:49:16 Macintosh [0x0-0x7a07a].com.apple.installer[925]: /Users/peterschroder/Desktop/MacPorts-1.8.2.pkg/Contents/Resources/InstallationCheck: line 13: sed: command not found

It seems that the /usr/bin disappeared from the $PATH.

I looked into serveral files and tried to find out where I might add this to the $PATH again, but it did not work using /etc/profile or /etc/bashrc.

So I dumped the image to my harddrive and added:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:$PATH

to the top of

/Users/peterschroder/Desktop/MacPorts-1.8.2.pkg/Contents/Resources/InstallationCheck

After doing this, I was able to install Mac-Ports.

Does anyone know where I can configure the $PATH so that the installation works?

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Are you setting PATH in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist or /etc/launchd.conf?

[blb@…]

From MacPorts' point of view, we could always make InstallationCheck​ explicitely use /usr/bin/uname.

[phoetmail@…]

I edited PATH in ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist with the Property List Editor and restarted the machine. This worked quite well!

I think that something messed up my machine (probably myself) and that it's very bad if some path is missing in the environment.

So using the absolute path in the installer would help for the installation, but there will probably arise more problems with the bad setup.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

I would tend to agree, a system with no /usr/bin in its PATH is going to have problems no matter what we do. Added a better error message for this case in r62460.