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

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 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
>
>   

OP,

And I would like to mention that portage has changed a LOT in the last 
six years.  The way you do things apparently has not.  That alone could 
lead to problems.  As software changes, we have to change the way we do 
things in order to react to those changes.  If we don't, then we could 
run into problems.  I first installed Gentoo from a 1.4 CD so I been 
around about the same amount of time you have.  Portage has changed a 
whole lot since then.  The way I do things has changed as well.  I don't 
think revdep-rebuild even existed back then.  I use it regularly now.  
Portage has a lot of options now that it didn't have back then.  They 
are there because they are needed and useful in certain situations. 

Using Gentoo basically requires you to stay up to date.  Getting behind 
can come back to bite you.  That can be said about a lot of situations 
with Gentoo, both in updating the OS and updating ourselves as well.

Dale

:-)  :-)