[gentoo-user] Re: sys-libs/-MERGING-pam

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:02 AM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
>  <SNIP>
>
> >
>  >  gandalf ~ # slocate MERGING-pam
>  >  /var/db/pkg/sys-libs/-MERGING-pam-0.99.8.1-r1
>  >  gandalf ~ #
>  >
>
>  I'm never taken the time to understand exactly how portage keeps track
>  of what is on a system so I'm now curious what represents an
>  'installed' package. Is it simply that there is a directory located
>  under /var/db/pkg?
>
>  Can I safely remove this directory? As a test I moved it elsewhere and
>  now eix-test-obsolete doesn't complain. I presume at this point I can
>  delete it. there's nothing in the directory as best I can tell and the
>  version number does not match the version of pam currently install.
>
>  Thanks in advance,
>  Mark
>

So, finishing this topic off on my own for now this Gentoo doc:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1

states the following:

<QUOTE>
Portage Database

Portage stores the state of your system (what packages are installed,
what files belong to which package, ...) in /var/db/pkg. Do not alter
these files manually! It might break Portage's knowledge of your
system.
</QUOTE>

So, reading between the lines, it seems that if someone knows wht they
are doing then they can change files in this directory. In my case the
-MERGING directory had no files in it and didn't match the installed
version of pam. I removed it and now eix-test-obsolete is happy.

Unless someone comes up with some addition info on things I should do
to clean this up more completely I figure I got a little bit of
education which is cool.

Sorry for the noise,
Mark
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