[gentoo-user] most of /usr/portage gone--why? and what now}

[Allan Gottlieb]

This fine morning I awoke to find that in my fairly new gentoo install
nearly all of /usr/portage is gone.

    bash-2.05b# ls -lA /mnt/gentoo-new/usr/portage
    total 20
    drwxrwsr-x  4 root portage 16384 Jul 12 22:10 distfiles
    drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 Jul 11 23:04 packages
    bash-2.05b#

The distfiles directory has many (appropriate) files and packages has
the one package it should.  The partition has plenty of room (almost
7GB).

I run esync from cron (anacron) when I boot and it failed (see below
for the mail sent by anacron) telling me to see emerge-sync.log.  Here
I see some failures and a statement that a new version of portage is
available (again see below).

I still have my previous gentoo (using it right now) on a different
partition.  It started from one of the 2004 profiles, but has been
kept up to date until a very few weeks ago when I started cutting over
to my new system.  I can certainly run an
   emerge --tree --ask --verbose --newuse --update --deep world
but wanted to do as little as possible before asking for advice.

My main question is whether I should copy files from the old
/usr/portage to the new one or is there better method to proceed.
I keep extensive backups of all my files and all of /etc, but do not
backup the system files (other than having an older version of gentoo
that is kept reasonably up to date).

Thanks for any help.
allan

================  Mail from anacron concerning today's esync ================

>From root@×××××××××.localdomain  Sat Jul 16 09:27:45 2005
Return-Path: <root@×××××××××.localdomain>
X-Original-To: root
Delivered-To: root@×××××××××.localdomain
Received: by localhost.localdomain (Postfix, from userid 0)
        id 5E33E544B5; Tue, 12 Jul 2005 11:49:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: root@×××××××××.localdomain (Anacron)
To: root@×××××××××.localdomain
Subject: Anacron job 'anacron-daily-2'
Message-Id: <20050712154951.5E33E544B5@×××××××××.localdomain>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 11:49:51 -0400 (EDT)

 * Importing old portage tree
 * Doing '/usr/bin/emerge sync' now
 * Error: '/usr/bin/emerge sync' failed, see /var/log/emerge-sync.log for errors
run-parts: /local/etc/anacron-daily-2/esync-cron exited with return code 1

>From root@×××××××××.localdomain  Sat Jul 16 09:34:29 2005
Return-Path: <root@×××××××××.localdomain>
X-Original-To: root
Delivered-To: root@×××××××××.localdomain
Received: by localhost.localdomain (Postfix, from userid 0)
        id 869A7544B7; Sat, 16 Jul 2005 09:34:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: root@×××××××××.localdomain (Anacron)
To: root@×××××××××.localdomain
Subject: Anacron job 'anacron-daily-2'
Message-Id: <20050716133426.869A7544B7@×××××××××.localdomain>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 09:34:26 -0400 (EDT)

 * Importing old portage tree
 * Doing '/usr/bin/emerge sync' now

 * Doing 'eupdatedb' now


 * esearch-index generated in 1 second(s)
 * indexed 0 ebuilds
 * size of esearch-index: 0 kB

 * Importing new portage tree
 * Preparing databases
 * Searching for changes

 * No updates found

================ Contents of emerge-sync.log ================

rsync: failed to connect to 128.118.99.31: Connection timed out
rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(88)
==============================
CLARKSON OPEN SOURCE INSTITUTE
http://cosi.clarkson.edu
==============================
IP:             mirror.clarkson.edu
                rsync10.us.gentoo.org
Specs:          Sun Ultra60
                2 x 296Mhz CPUs
                1796 MB RAM
                250 GB RAID Storage
Bandwidth:      10 Mbit (when limited)
User Limit:     35 off-campus connections
Location:       Clarkson University
                http://www.clarkson.edu
                Potsdam, NY USA
Contact:        mirror@×××××××××××××.edu
==============================
Welcome to our rsync server.

receiving file list ...
1 file to consider

Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 0
Total file size: 32 bytes
Total transferred file size: 0 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 32
Total bytes written: 203
Total bytes read: 550

wrote 203 bytes  read 550 bytes  301.20 bytes/sec
total size is 32  speedup is 0.04
==============================
CLARKSON OPEN SOURCE INSTITUTE
http://cosi.clarkson.edu
==============================
IP:             mirror.clarkson.edu
                rsync10.us.gentoo.org
Specs:          Sun Ultra60
                2 x 296Mhz CPUs
                1796 MB RAM
                250 GB RAID Storage
Bandwidth:      10 Mbit (when limited)
User Limit:     35 off-campus connections
Location:       Clarkson University
                http://www.clarkson.edu
                Potsdam, NY USA
Contact:        mirror@×××××××××××××.edu
==============================
Welcome to our rsync server.

receiving file list ...
1 file to consider
 0 files...
Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 0
Total file size: 0 bytes
Total transferred file size: 0 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 20
Total bytes written: 181
Total bytes read: 538

wrote 181 bytes  read 538 bytes  287.60 bytes/sec
total size is 0  speedup is 0.00
>>> starting rsync with rsync://128.118.99.31/gentoo-portage...
>>> checking server timestamp ...
>>> retry ...


>>> Starting retry 1 of 3 with rsync://128.153.144.22/gentoo-portage
>>> checking server timestamp ...


 * An update to portage is available. It is _highly_ recommended
 * that you update portage now, before any other packages are updated.
 * Please do so and then update ALL of your configuration files.

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