emerge "no profile directory; system mode unavailable

elio · n00b Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 3

I don't really understand what the problem is here. I've installed Gentoo many times before, but emerge has always worked. I followed the instructions to the letter, twice! Is my system or maybe the installation CD messed up, or have I been forgetting something? If there would be a quick fix for this, that'd be swell.

z-lite · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Aug 2003 Posts: 76

When do you get this error? If you don't have portage installed, you can download a copy of portage from a mirror (ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/snapshots/portage-20040121.tar.bz2 is one)
and then execute:

tar -xvjf /directory/for/portage-20040121.tar.bz2 -C /usr

gwlinden · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 7:45 pm Post subject:

That error message resembles strikingly what I get if I forget to mount the disk that has my /usr/portage files.

Did you move that directory somewhere else (I have it on an NFS disk), or perhaps did not unpack the portage snapshot?
_________________
Gwendolyn

elio · n00b Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 3

Nope. I just unpacked it again, just to make sure. Perhaps I'll try it all over again (ugh). Nevermind, thanks anyway.

tomk · Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:17 am Post subject:

FuggLee · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2003 Posts: 4

I just ran into this problem on my system after I moved portage to a different directory. The problem is that there is an /etc/make.profile symlink (or there should be) that points to /usr/portage/profiles/default-x86-1.4. If this symlink is not there or not pointing to the right place, then you will get that error. I changed the symlink to point to my new portage directory and it worked fine again. Check to make sure that link is there, that it is pointing to a valid file, and that the file is right for your system and architecture.