I just successfully updated world. In order to make room in my root, I subsequently moved /var/tmp/portage to a mounted usb stick and symlinked it to /var/tmp.
/var/cache/{binpkgs,distfiles} are already successfully located on that device, over symlinks. Now, when I try to emerge pavucontrol, all 10 required packages fail, with a failure in the unpack phase of ebuild. My mounted storage is: /dev/sdb2 on /lcl/USB_SanDisk_3.2Gen1_0901709d...ad012f/2 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime) I also have such error messages: /usr/bin/install: cannot create directory "/var/tmp/portage": Permission denied * ERROR: app-text/iso-codes-4.17.0::gentoo failed (unpack phase): Apparently, the unpack phase wants to create /var/tmp/portage, and if it already exists, it failes?