System is completely f*^ked... Question...

[swagr]

First, let me appologize for my tone in what follows.

Apparently during the portage updates, gentoo updates, rsync relocations, etc, I didn't update my system enough or at the right times or the right packages, or whatever.

I have been a Linux user for (mostly Slackware) for 5 years, and have been using Gentoo since January. I "administer" Gentoo on my laptop, Slackware on my desktop and firewall, and Mandrake on an intranet server at work. So I like to think I have a some clue about running and using Linux.

Back to my problem. Somehow my system got into a state (using only the supplied update tool emerge) where I can not fix it. I did everything mentioned in the forums for the portage upgrade and I still can't emerge --update system, or emerge rsync. Or emerge anything for that matter.

That just smells rotten. Let's recap:
Experienced Linux user installs Gentoo.
Uses included software to maintain system.
Follows instructions.
Ends up with unusable system.

I've given up.
I've downloaded the newest ISO and MIGHT start from scratch, IF...

I can be assured the Gentoo team is doing something to make sure that from now-on, portage will always work and update the system no matter what state it's in (so long as it was portage that put the system into that state), and this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

So someone assure me.
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[Guest]

can you atleast state what the error messege is when it fails the emerge....adn i am assuming you changes the make.conf file to point to the relocated server info...i am sure you have done this but just had to ask

[doh]

So what's it say about your skills when a guy who has been using redhat for 8 months installed Gentoo without a hitch? :rolleyes:
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[swagr]

Quick reply:
Basically wget and rsync both complain about improper usage.


So what's it say about your skills when a guy who has been using redhat for 8 months installed Gentoo without a hitch?

First "installed" being the oprative word here. I installed it to. I was responsible for installation and it worked. Portage (and it's "upgrade") was responsible maintaining my system and it didn't.

Anyway, Like I inferred: What does it say about a distro when it breaks itself through normal usage?
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[Target]

emerge update != redhat update

Gentoo is a meta-distribution. It's up to the maintainer (which would be you in this case) to test and stay on top of updates. You can then disseminate the software throughout all of your systems using profiles.

The reward is that you have finely-tuned, high-performance systems and only really have to perform software maintenance at one point.

If you have your profiles set up properly, you can even perform automatic updates from all of your machines without worrying about them breaking, because they'll only do what you've deemed safe.

All of that said, though; Some of the package maintainers have terrible habits when it comes to dependency settings. Until these people learn better and make more sensible decisions in their ebuilds, things can and will break despite your best efforts.

You might be better off with red hat if you don't have the time for this sort of thing and don't want to wait for the distribution to mature.

[Guest]

Update...

Like I mentioned, rsync and wget were complaining about improper usage. I can't emerge --update system because the gcc build fails with a wget error. So I though maybe I should try (crap shoot) to emerge wget to update it. Strangely enough it worked. This reassured me that wget (in the first place) worked. But once again when I try to emerge --update system, wget complains that it got called the wrong way (basically it just spits out it's usage) on the gcc update (which is required for me to update everything else including portage which is already becoming obsolete).

Gentoo is a meta-distribution. It's up to the maintainer (which would be you in this case) to test and stay on top of updates

WRONG! It's up to me AND the maintainers of portage. Otherwise what's the point of portage at all? At some point you have to trust some part of of your (the maintainer's) responsibilities to portage. Otherwise it's just a waste of disc space.

What I'm saying is:
one day portage worked for me.
The next time I tried it, it didn't. Not as a result of anything I had done.I had made no changes to the system in between. I visited the site to see what was going on. I read the forums. I followed instructions. And although I got through them, my system didn't.
Portage has left me in a chicken/egg situation. I need to update gcc to update python to update portage. But I can't update gcc because my version of portage is 'broken' and can't update gcc. This is why I need to update portage so I can update gcc ....

[klieber]

[Guest]

Ok.

(Sorry. I my previous post I kept writing gcc when I meant to say glibc.)

when I "emerge --pretend --update system", the first thing that needs to be done is update glibc

When I "emerge --update system" this happens (and it took a lot of work to even get to this point):

-wget: missing URL
Usage: wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

Try `wget --help' for more options.
wget: missing URL
Usage: wget [OPTION]... [URL]...

Try `wget --help' for more options.
 ...done!
>>> emerge sys-libs/glibc-2.2.5-r2 to /

>>> Downloading http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/distfiles/glibc-2.2.5.tar.bz2

>>> Downloading ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/glibc/releases/glibc-2.2.5.tar.bz2
!!! Couldn't download glibc-2.2.5.tar.bz2. Aborting.
!!! emerge aborting on /usr/portage/sys-libs/glibc/glibc-2.2.5-r2.ebuild

[Psychephylax]

I would say that's a small price to pay considering that Windows breaks randomly and gives you almost no messages that are informative about the cause of the problem.
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[Target]

[MechaMonkey]

I kinda rushed through the portage/version1 update for Gentoo and wasn't paying much attention (always a bad thing to do as root ).

Afterwards emerge began to bail with some wget errors (such as those listed above) when trying to fetch tarballs and the like.

I later realised that I'd forgotten to check out which config files needed updating.

Surprise, surprise /etc/make.globals needed some updates.

For more info try

[swagr]

PLEASE READ ME

Sorry. I was angry.
It wasn't arrogance. I only expected more from Gentoo because I believed it was a gret distro.
Thanks for 6 great months of Gentoo before this one miserable week.
Bye.

[mge]

Look at that guide on updateing to 1.0. I had the same errors you did. But with smart administration it is not that hard to get it working again. Also you can read the /usr/portage/sys-apps/portage/files/README.RESCUE file.

[Guest]

[Guest]

/usr/portage/sys-apps/portage/files/README.RESCUE

...

ImportError: No module named fchksum

[swagr]

I have the 1.1a ISO.
I'm starting from scratch.
I will be very carefull.
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RUN!

[BillyD]

Good luck!

[klieber]

[CodeThumper]

I'm having the same problem when trying to emerge - showing wget usage. I recently did the update thing from rc6 (had some fun with python deps, but got that resolved).

In my /etc/make.global file, I have
FETCHCOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -t 5 --passive-ftp \${x} -P \${DISTDIR}"

I changed this to:
FETCHCOMMAND="/bin/echo -t 5 --passive-ftp \${x} -P \${DISTDIR}"

Now emerge prints:
>>> Downloading http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/distfiles/linux-2.4.18.tar.bz2
-t 5 --passive-ftp -P /usr/portage/distfiles


Obviously, the ${x} isn't getting set from the environment, which is why wget is complaining because it doesn't get the url of the tarball. (This inconsistency is probably due to some change in the portage scripts that I didn't change my config files.) Can someone check their FETCHCOMMAND for 1.0 and let me know what it should be? Thanks.

[CodeThumper]

Funny what you find when doing searching forums for 'FETCHCOMMAND'... I solved my own problem with this:

FETCHCOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -t 5 --passive-ftp \${URI} -P \${DISTDIR}"

The ${x} changed to ${URI}.
Hope this helps someone else.