Re: [gentoo-user] Re: how to recover a portage that wasn't in use for very long time

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 13 May 2009 12:03:40 Alexey Luchko wrote:
> Alexey Luchko wrote:
> > colinux ~ # emerge portage --pretend --tree
> >
> > These are the packages that would be merged, in reverse order:
> >
> > Calculating dependencies... done!
> > [nomerge      ] sys-apps/portage-2.1.6.11 [2.1.2.2]
> > [ebuild     U ]  app-shells/bash-3.2_p39 [3.1_p17] USE="-examples%
> > -plugins%"
> > [ebuild     U ] sys-apps/portage-2.1.6.11 [2.1.2.2]
> > [ebuild     U ]  dev-python/pycrypto-2.0.1-r6 [2.0.1-r5]
> > [ebuild     U ]  sys-apps/sandbox-1.6-r2 [1.2.17]
> > [ebuild  N    ]   app-arch/lzma-utils-4.32.7  USE="-nocxx"
> > [ebuild  N    ]  app-admin/eselect-news-20080320
> > [ebuild     U ]   app-admin/eselect-1.0.11-r1 [1.0.7] USE="-vim-syntax%"
> > [ebuild     U ]  app-misc/pax-utils-0.1.19 [0.1.15]
> > [blocks B     ] <sys-apps/portage-2.1.5 (is blocking
> > app-shells/bash-3.2_p39)
> > colinux ~ #
>
> Hi!
>
> Thank every one for your help.

[snip long sad story of portage blockers]

> Here I am now ;)
> Any advice is welcome!

Why are you doing this? Is it to learn how to cope with such things?

If not, you are really wasting time that you will never get back. The last 18 
months has seen much activity in the tree, lot's of it from large packages 
being split into smaller ones, and blockers installed.

You've already come across mktemp/coreutils and e2fsprogs. You still have to 
deal with bash/python then that delicious recent cock-up with wget, expat and 
you have to decide if you want com_err or not. And plenty more. This all 
happened so long ago I forget the details (lucky for you it's all in the mail 
archives!).

Trust me, if this is not a learning exercise, just unmount your data volumes 
and reinstall the machine. The pain is not worth it. Really. Especially if 
glibc decides it doesn't like your headers, then you really are up the creek 
if you didn't quickpkg critical apps in the system set first :-)

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com