[gentoo-user] How to fix license error during install?

[Jeffrey Walton]

Hi Everyone,

I'm having trouble installing Gentoo in a Virtual Box VM for testing.
It is a x86_64 guest. I selected a hardened profile to test PaX, which
means I selected 18 in 'eselect profile'.

I'm at "Configuring the Linux kernel" in the Handbook
(https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Kernel#Alternative:_Using_genkernel).
The part "emerge --ask sys-kernel/gentoo-sources" seems OK and does
not report errors. The genkernel part fails.

The specific error is:

$ LICENSE_ACCEPT="*" emerge --ask --autounmask-write
sys-kernel/genkernel 2>&1 | tee kernel.txt
$ cat kernel.txt

 * IMPORTANT: 6 config files in '/etc/portage' need updating.
Calculating dependencies   * See the CONFIGURATION FILES and
CONFIGURATION FILES UPDATE TOOLS
 * sections of the emerge man page to learn how to update config files.
... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-arch/cpio-2.12-r1  USE="nls"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20200316
USE="redistributable -initramfs -savedconfig (-unknown-license)"
[ebuild  N     ] sys-kernel/genkernel-4.0.4  USE="firmware (-ibm)"

The following license changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.license" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by sys-kernel/genkernel-4.0.4::gentoo[firmware]
# required by genkernel (argument)
=sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20200316 linux-fw-redistributable no-source-code

Autounmask changes successfully written.

 * IMPORTANT: 7 config files in '/etc/portage' need updating.
 * See the CONFIGURATION FILES and CONFIGURATION FILES UPDATE TOOLS
 * sections of the emerge man page to learn how to update config
files.Here is the

Here is the portage(5) man page:
https://dev.gentoo.org/~zmedico/portage/doc/man/portage.5.html. Here
is the part about package.license:

    This will allow ACCEPT_LICENSE (see make.conf(5)) to be augmented
for a single package.

    Format:

        - comment lines begin with # (no inline comments)
        - one DEPEND atom per line followed by additional licenses or groups

Removing LICENSE_ACCEPT="*" and --autounmask-write does not help.

The information provided in portage(5) and package.license leaves a
lot to be desired.

What is the problem and how do I fix it?