"fowners root:portage /var/lib/gentoo/news || die" causes app-admin/eselect-1.3.1's install phase to fail on systems that lack a portage group. This breaks the Gentoo Prefix bootstrap procedure on all non-Gentoo systems. Changing it to be "use prefix || fowners root:portage /var/lib/gentoo/news || die" solves this.
We need to suppress the fperms too, if the fowners failed. So I'd rather change it to: fowners root:portage /var/lib/gentoo/news \ && fperms g+w /var/lib/gentoo/news
(In reply to comment #1) > We need to suppress the fperms too, if the fowners failed. So I'd rather > change it to: > > fowners root:portage /var/lib/gentoo/news \ > && fperms g+w /var/lib/gentoo/news There is also a call in pkg_postinstall that also fails (but it doesn't cause problems for the bootstrap process). It should be suppressed as well. The following should work: use prefix || fowners root:portage /var/lib/gentoo/news && fperms g+w /var/lib/gentoo/news I butchered the formatting here because it is a pain to do proper formatting in bugzilla, but this should provide the general idea. Mind if I commit?
Fixed in 1.3.1.