Activating ports, /tmp/mpextract

[ryan@…]

I'm trying out unprivileged port installation onto an NFS volume. Some of the ports work fine, and others fail during activation with an error similar to:

Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: could not read "/tmp/mpextractRaNdMsTr/my/nfs/vol/share/some/file": no such file or directory

The random string after mpextract changes every time I invoke port. I was able to install (with activation) expat, gperf, and zlib. openssl reports:

Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: could not read "/tmp/mpextractbwThfU1Z/my/nfs/vol/share/man/man3/bn_print.3ssl.gz": no such file or directory

The error referenced a log file which reported:

:error:activate Target org.macports.activate returned: could not read "/tmp/mpex
tractbwThfU1Z/my/nfs/dir/share/man/man3/bn_print.3ssl.gz": no 
such file or directory
:debug:activate Backtrace: could not read "/tmp/mpextractbwThfU1Z/my/nfs/dir/share/man/man3/bn_print.3ssl.gz": no such file or directory

When the port command was running in one shell, I ran in another:

# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_print.3ssl.gz -ls
49783049        8 lrwxrwxrwx    1 scf      wheel          19 Jul 25 14:37 /tmp/mpextractZPRfhjbH/my/nfs/dir/share/man/man3/bn_print.3ssl.gz -> bn_internal.3ssl.gz

I repeated the search for bn_internal and, while the activation was underway in one shell, on some invocations it was there and on some it was not.

# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_internal.3ssl.gz -ls
# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_internal.3ssl.gz -ls
49786216       16 -r--r--r--    1 scf      wheel        4626 Jul 25 13:52 /tmp/mpextractZWZZGmqK/my/nfs/dir/share/man/man3/bn_internal.3ssl.gz
# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_internal.3ssl.gz -ls
# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_internal.3ssl.gz -ls
# find /tmp/mp* -name bn_internal.3ssl.gz -ls

ncurses had similar trouble.