[gentoo-user] emerge gone--can I use a tbz?

[Allan Gottlieb <gottlieb@nyu.edu>]

Something went wrong (I was away from the screen) with a

   emerge --ignore --depclean --ask ; revdep-rebuild --
   --ignore-default-opts --ask

I meant to answer n to the depclean since I wasn't ready to unmerge
gentoo-sources, but perhaps I answered y (there were only three
other--non critical packages mentioned).

Anyway now emerge just returns immediately no matter what arguments it
is given.

I do have buildsyspkg so have many versions of portage as tbz files.
But emerge won't install it (again, just returns).

Can I do something analogous to an untar on one of the portage files?

thanks,
allan