On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 08:33:58PM +0100, Holly Bostick wrote: > Oh, I dunno-- what actually happens to the world file (in terms of > ownership/process ownership and locking) at the time that an emerge that > affects the world file is being performed?
I took it to mean that the OP typed emerge --pretend --update world or some equivalent during the emerge. Now, Personally I do that every now and then, and have never ran into that problem before, hence the comment about unfortunate timing issues. > > There are reasons that major Portage processes are not supposed to be > carried out concurrently. It's true that while I'm upgrading KDE, I > probably could emerge... oh, mutt... at the same time in another > instance, but checking the entire Portage tree (as in emerge -ua** > world) is just not recommended, since Portage can't really be expected > to know which updates are really valid (because it's currently > performing some of them in another instance, with which it can't > communicate). What I've seen in those cases is that the process will read the current world file, compare the available packages with the current cache, and decide what it would emerge. I.e. if I start a emerge -u world which wants to install mozilla-firefox, mutt, and openssh, and after firefox was installed, the cache updated, the old version removed, if I type emerge -up world I usually would see that it wants to emerge openssh and mutt, even though it is going on in another process. > I mean, you could all be quite right, and I wrong, but Istr I got this > message when I did something similarly unwise, and after the emerge > actually finished, there was nothing wrong anymore (because the left > hand knew what the right hand had done). > Yes, in general I agree it could be a bad practice. But I find this case particularly interesting since the emerge process is only suppose to write (and hence, modify) to the world file if something not in it is specified to be installed on the commandline. In particular, just an emerge --update world should only read the world file, and not write to it. Until the OP posts more, we cannot tell what actually is wrong with the world file, but I doubt it has something to do with the ongoing emerge process. W -- "Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of. `Bet you weren't expecting to see me again,' said the monster, which Arthur couldn't help thinking was a strange remark for it to make, seeing as he had never met the creature before. He could tell that he hadn't met the creature before from the simple fact that he was able to sleep at nights." - Arthur discovering who had diverted him from going to a party. Sortir en Pantoufles: up 24 days, 16:55 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
