[gentoo-amd64] Re: updating world

[Duncan]

Gavin Seddon posted <1136903339.6259.5.camel@linuxstation>, excerpted
below,  on Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:28:59 +0000:

> Hi,
> I have been updating my system.  Firstly I used 'emerge --sync' then
> 'emerge --update world'.  However, the update stops with a segmentation
> fault.  Is this a big problem that needs fixing and how?

You don't provide much information there.  Where does it stop?  What's the
last output before the segfault?  Can you do an emerge --pretend --update
world? What about an emerge --pretend --update system?  What about an
emerge --pretend portage (this one to see if it can handle a specific
package)?

If all those work, it's a problem in actually merging a package.  We'll
need the last 20 lines or so of the output, the command you were running,
and the last 10 lines or so of /var/log/emerge.log, to see what's going
on.  If the above emerge --pretend tests don't work, continue with the
below tests, stopping after each one if it works or you found the problem.

You should be safely able to rename your entire portage tree
(/usr/portage/ by default) and do another emerge sync to regenerate it. 
See if that solves the problem.

Check your world file (/var/lib/portage/world).  It should be a plain text
file consisting of a list of category/package names, one to a line, with
the last line a blank line.  Back it up before making any changes, of
course, so you can restore the backup if you screw up.  If it's /not/ a
simply plain text file as described above, you'll probably have to rebuild
it.  Post the problem and we'll go from there.

It could also be a corrupted portage database.  Try renaming /var/db/pkg/
to something else (like /var/db/pkg.test).  You should then be able to
complete an emerge --pretend world, altho it will want to merge
everything, since you just removed the portage database telling it what
you have merged at present.  This one gets a bit more complex, as you
probably don't want to remerge everything, altho you could.  If you've
been using FEATURES=buildpkg, it wouldn't even be that hard.  (That's why
I said /rename/ the portage tree, above, not /delete/ it, since the
packages you built you'll want to keep, and they are normally in
/usr/portage/package.)

If you haven't found the problem by this point, you may have a bad portage
or python itself.  If so, you'll have to find a binary package of
whichever one, to get back up and running.  They are available, but no use
worrying about that until we find it's the problem.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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