[gentoo-dev] portage broken

[Lang Hurst <lang@tharin.com>]

Good Day.  I've posted my problem to both the gentoo-user list and to the forums on gentoo.org and while I've found several mentions of this problem, I've yet to find a solution other than the M$ sounding "reinstall."

emerge is broken on my system (XFS, 2.4.19-gentoo-r5).  It seems to be something with python, but I really don't know enough about gentoo, or really python either, to track it down.

emerge rsync  WORKS
emerge -s [package]  WORKS
emerge [package] errors out everytime with:

ValueError: invalid literal for long(): 

as in:

> emerge portage
Calculating dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge sys-apps/portage-1.9.13 to /
>>> Unpacking source...
>>> Source unpacked.
gcc -Wall -O2    sandbox.c   -o sandbox
gcc -Wall -O2   -c -o libsandbox.o libsandbox.c
gcc -Wall -O2  libsandbox.o -o libsandbox.so -ldl --shared

>>> Install portage-1.9.13 into /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/ category sys-apps
running install
running build
running build_ext
building 'missingos' extension
creating build
creating build/temp.linux-i686-2.2
gcc -DNDEBUG -march=i686 -O3 -pipe -fPIC -I/usr/include/python2.2 -c missingos.c -o build/temp.lin 
ux-i686-2.2/missingos.o -O2 -mcpu=i686 -pipe
creating build/lib.linux-i686-2.2
gcc -shared build/temp.linux-i686-2.2/missingos.o -o build/lib.linux-i686-2.2/missingos.so
running install_lib
creating /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr
creating /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib
creating /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/python2.2
creating /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages
copying build/lib.linux-i686-2.2/missingos.so -> /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/pyt 
hon2.2/site-packages
warning: install: modules installed to '/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/python2.2/si 
te-packages/', which is not in Python's module search path (sys.path) -- you'll have to change the 
 search path yourself
Listing /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/output.py ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/xpak.py ...
Listing /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/output.py ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py ...
Compiling /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/xpak.py ...
strip:
/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/missingos.so
/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/portage/bin/tbz2tool
/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/usr/lib/portage/bin/sandbox
/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/lib/libsandbox.so
>>> Completed installing into /var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image/

>>> Merging sys-apps/portage-1.9.13 to /
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/emerge", line 1242, in ?
    mydepgraph.merge(mydepgraph.altlist())
  File "/usr/bin/emerge", line 619, in merge
    retval=portage.doebuild(y,"merge",myroot,edebug)
  File "/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py", line 1 
102, in doebuild
    return merge(settings["CATEGORY"],settings["PF"],settings["D"],settings["BUILDDIR"]+"/build-in 
fo",myroot,myebuild=settings["EBUILD"])
  File "/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py", line 1 
354, in merge
    mylink.merge(pkgloc,infloc,myroot,myebuild)
  File "/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py", line 3 
180, in merge
    self.treewalk(mergeroot,myroot,inforoot,myebuild)
  File "/var/tmp/portage/portage-1.9.13/image//usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/portage.py", line 2 
858, in treewalk
    packagecounter=long(globalcounterfile.readline())
ValueError: invalid literal for long(): 

emerge errors out with the same error with anypackage.  I'm pretty happy with the way my system is set up right now, but I'm sure that someday I'll want to upgrade or add applications.  I don't really want to jump through the hoops of configuring postfix, apache, X, etc. again real soon.

Hopefully someone here can point me to a way of saving the system without doing a reinstall.  Thanks for your time.

-Lang