Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/make.profile symlink broken
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:07:08
Message-Id: 201012090144.23245.alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] /etc/make.profile symlink broken by Trifu Catalin Florin
1 Apparently, though unproven, at 01:10 on Thursday 09 December 2010, Trifu
2 Catalin Florin did opine thusly:
3
4 > Hi all
5 >
6 > I'm struggling for several weeks to get my systems up to date. I have two
7 > systems which haven't been updated for an year or so.
8 > I have also opened a topic on the gentoo forum that can be found at this
9 > address: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-852377-highlight-.html
10 >
11 >
12 > As you will see in that topic, the error was related to a circular
13 > dependency between gcc and glibc. I didn't manage to solve the problem but
14 > tonight I had an other error.
15
16 I had this a while ago. IIRC it was something to do with going directly to
17 glibc-2.11 but the version numbers don't matter.
18
19 The solution is to upgrade one package to a version less than most recent that
20 DOES NOT cause blockers. Then emerge world and it will all be fine.
21
22 In your case, emerge a glibc-2.10 first, then world.
23
24 > On one of the systems, the symlink between /etc/make.profile was broken. I
25 > have discovered when I have tried to do emerge --update --deep world. I
26 > don't know why
27 >
28 > and I'm a little bit scared because I couldn't find anything in the bash
29 > history that could have give me a clue of the mistake I have made which
30 > lead to the destruction of
31 >
32 > that symlink. This would be my first question, did anyone experienced the
33 > same problem? Does anyone has any idea of a mistake that could lead to
34 > this result?
35
36 I have no idea. I also have absolutely no way to help you as you haven't said
37 what the symlink is. You are basically saying "My box is broken. What's wrong?
38 Please help!" I can't answer that.
39
40 Post output of "ls -al /etc/make.profile"
41
42 > I have mapped /etc/make.profile with another profile and I have tried to
43 > update the system again. This time, the error thrown by portage was
44 > something related to xz-utils,
45 > but unfortunately I didn't copy the error.
46
47 Then you must run it again, copy the error and post it. We cannot help you
48 without that.
49
50 You probably have the recent blocker on xz-utils.
51
52 > Can anyone tell me a brief
53 > explanation of what a profile is and how does it affect my system?
54
55 A profile is basically a definition of the minimum packages needed to get a
56 working system. You must have a toolchain and python for instance, so a
57 profile will tell portage to include these and they must be there. Different
58 architectures have different needs and profiles cater for these as well.
59
60 A profile is a bunch of files in a directory. If you look in one you will find
61 things there that are similar to what you created in /etc/portage/* and they
62 tend to work the same way.
63
64
65 > What is
66 > the difference between the
67 >
68 > profiles listed under /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0 and
69 > those listed under /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/10.0 ?
70
71 10.0 is the current profile
72 2208.0 is an old one
73
74 To find the differences, you must compare the files in them.
75
76 > Can you
77 > please tell me what should I
78 > read in order to find more information about this profiles?
79
80 Read the portage install docs at gentoo.org
81 Read the man pages for portage. there's about 10 of them. Read them all.
82 Then read this to find out how to best ask list questions and get good
83 answers:
84
85 http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
86
87
88
89 >
90 > Thank you in advance!
91
92 --
93 alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com