Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Heads up: Your system might be broken and/or insecure due to serious patch-2.6 bug

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

On Tuesday 08 December 2009 00:46:18 Philip Webb wrote:
> 091207 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Sun, 6 Dec 2009 14:49:44 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
> >> I know that from my home-made list of pkgs which I have installed,
> >> where they are marked with 'W' & system pkgs with 'S'.
> >> Yes, I do have to keep it upto-date as I do emerges.
> >> One of the major deficiencies of Gentoo is
> >> that it doesn't provide such a file automatically.
> >
> > emerge -p @system
> > emerge -p @world
> 
>   root:501 ~> emerge -p @system
>     !!! '@system' is not a valid package atom.
>     !!! Please check ebuild(5) for full details.
>   root:502 ~> emerge -p @world
>     !!! '@world' is not a valid package atom.
>     !!! Please check ebuild(5) for full details.
> 
> 'man 5 ebuild' has nothing relevant to '@' 'system' 'world' '-p'.
> I'm using the latest stable Portage-2.1.6.3 .

Your version of portage does not support sets.

> Any further advice ?
> 
> Let me emphasise yet again: the way I do things has been successful
> on  2  machines for more than  6  years; it's others who have problems
> doing it their way & regularly seek advice on this list as a result.

Let me correct you there:

The experienced old hands here almost uniformly do not have such problems. 
It's the n00bs who don't grok portage just yet, or don't know to look inside 
ebuilds when the ebuild goes wonky, who have such problems. The classic cause 
of problems is mixing stable and testing

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com