[gentoo-dev] GLGA for Portage

[Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org>]

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GENTOO LINUX GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT 200210-001
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PACKAGE : Portage
SUMMARY : library symlink mangling / deletion
SEVERITY: System Disabling
IMPACT  : All Systems
DATE    : 2002-10-28 22:00 UTC

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A bug involving the interaction of 'ldconfig' and portage has been
identified for all systems using masked libraries. Libraries that
have been installed but are now masked in portage will be downgraded
by portage. In versions of portage prior to 2.0.43, portage creates
symlinks in the library directories properly for newly merged, but
older, library. A call to ldconfig causes these symlinks to be over-
written with what the system(ldconfig) assumes is the best, the
highest version, and then portage procedes to remove the symlinks
as they match how the previous version had set them. This problem
can result in users being locked out of systems as required libraries
are effectively disabled.

AFFECTED SYSTEMS

All systems using portage prior to portage-2.0.43 are succeptable.
Systems that have installed the latest versions of libraries that
have since been masked in portage are of major concern, and systems
with ncurses-5.3 installed can disable logins if 'emerge -u world'
is performed with ncurses-5.3 masked.

SOLUTION

Users experiencing missing library symlinks can do the following:
# ldconfig
# emerge rsync
# emerge '=portage-2.0.43'

If a root console is not accessable the following method may be used:
Systems using Grub:
  press 'e' on your kernel
  press 'e' over your kernel line
  append without the quotes:
    " init=/bin/sash"
  press enter to finish the changes
  press 'b' to boot the kernel
Systems using LILO:
  at boot hold in left shift to get the prompt
  type in your kernel's label (name)
    You can get the list of kernel names by hitting <tab> at this point.
  append to that label the following: ' init=/bin/sash'
    You may also have to specify a 'root=' or other information.
  press enter to boot the kernel
When at the '>' prompt type the following:
    > mount -o remount,rw /
    > /sbin/ldconfig
    > mount -o remount,ro
    > reboot

After running the above Grub or LILO commands, users should update to
portage-2.0.43 as stated above for users not locked out of their consoles.

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carpaski@gentoo.org
seemant@gentoo.org
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-- 
Seemant Kulleen
Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
Gentoo Linux					http://www.gentoo.org/~seemant

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