Bugzilla Bug 87888

I admin Gentoo machines and build packages on one and install the binaries on
the other machines. I use --getbinpkgonly for this  with the command : emerge
--update --verbose --deep --getbinpkgonly world . The build machine, "bhim",
also hosts the  local portage tree. 

On a machine called awaaz, I run emerge -uvDG world but I get this error: 
awaaz root # emerge -uvDG world
Fetching binary packages info...
 * No password provided for username 'anonymous'

Loaded metadata pickle.
cache miss: 'x' --- cache hit: 'o'
ooooooooooooo(truncated)
  -- DONE!

Calculating world dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 47) net-www/mozilla-launcher-1.23 to /
Fetching 'net-www/mozilla-launcher-1.23'

Error: A file called mozilla-launcher-1.23.tbz2 was not found on the server
Fetcher exited with a failure condition.
!!! CATEGORY info missing from info chunk, aborting...

On bhim, ls -lh /usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-launcher* gives the
following:
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 25K Apr  4 13:44
/usr/portage/packages/All/mozilla-launcher-1.30.tbz2

which is not surprising, since mozilla-launcher-1.23 is out of the portage tree
:

awaaz root # etcat -v mozilla-launcher
[ Results for search key           : mozilla-launcher ]
[ Candidate applications found : 2 ]

 Only printing found installed programs.

*  www-client/mozilla-launcher :
        [  I] 1.30 (0)
        [M~ ] 1.32 (0)


The output of awaaz root # emerge -uvDG --debug is tarbz2ed and appended. I
think the problem lies in stale metadata being present in two mammoth files in
/var/cache/edb/metadata.idx.most_recent (93MB) and
/var/cache/edb/remote_metadata.pickle (93MB). Permissions on both are 
-rw-r--r--  1 root root. 




On another machine with an identical configuration, deleting the two 90MB files
caused the problem to be resolved. as the files are 30mb in size, I can't
upload them to bugzilla (or can I ? ) ;)  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




emerge info for awaaz is appeneded: 

awaaz edb # emerge info
Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/x86/2004.3, gcc-3.3.5,
glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1,
2.6.11-ck2 i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.11-ck2 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16
Python:              dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1 [2.3.4 (#1, Mar 15 2005,
16:33:52)]
distcc 2.16 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [enabled]
ccache version 2.3 [enabled]
dev-lang/python:     2.3.4-r1
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.59-r6, 2.13
sys-devel/automake:  1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.5, 1.4_p6, 1.6.3, 1.9.4
sys-devel/binutils:  2.15.92.0.2-r1
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.10-r4
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.8.1-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O2 -pipe -mmmx -msse -mfpmath=sse"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env
/usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config
/usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config
/var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O2 -pipe -mmmx -msse -mfpmath=sse"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig buildpkg ccache distcc distlocks sandbox
sfperms"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://bhim/"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://bhim/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 X aalib acpi acpi4linux alsa apache2 apm arts artswrappersuid
audiofile
avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzlib cdparanoia cdr cpdflib crypt cups curl dba dga
dhcp dnd dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread edl encode esd exif faac faad fam fftw fla
flac
fltk font-server foomaticdb fortran ftp gd gdbm gif gimp gimpprint gkrellm
gnome
gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml hal i8x0 imagemagick imap imlib imlib2
jack jack-tmpfs java javascript jbig jpeg kde kdeenablefinal lcms ldap libcaca
libclamav libg++ libwww lzo mad mailbox maildir mbox mime ming mmx mmx2 mng
motif mozilla mozsvg mp3 mpeg mpi mysql nas ncurses nethack network nls nptl
oggvorbis openal opengl oss pam pcre pdf pdflib perl pic png posix ppds python
qt quicktime readline real recode rtc samba scanner sdl session silc slang slp
sockets speex spell sqlite sse sse2 ssl svga tcltk tcpd tga theora tiff
truetype
truetype-fonts type1-fonts underscores unicode usb v4l v4l2 vim-with-x wmf xml
xml2 xmms xpm xprint xscreensaver xv xvid zlib video_cards_i810 linguas_hi"
Unset:  ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS

Created an attachment (id=55265) [details]
root awaaz # emerge -uvDdG world output

here's the output of emerge --update --verbose --debug --deep --getbinpkgonly 

13:10 <Kream> the way that I've been solving problems is this: if
--getbinpkgonly screws up, make sure all /usr/local/portage, USE flags,
/etc/portage/package.keywords are IDENTICAL... then i try to delete the remote
metadata files (two of em)... then I try --getbinpkg ... then I resort to
manually copying the binaries into /usr/portage/packages/All .... then a
--usepkgonly usually works. By then I've been swearing for a long time.. :)

This problem was fixed by method 3... spoken to ferringb on #gentoo-portage at
Thu May 12 07:47:37 UTC 2005 ... the logs should shed more light on the
matter... basically we came to the conclusion that the binpkg flakiness is due
to some underlying issues with the binpkg code.. I will be starting a blog to
document my experiments with binpkg
cheers :)

Reopening... If we closed every bug that is planned on being fixed in the next
major version, we'd have no open bugs. ;)

*** Bug 118652 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I've been using getbinpkgonly on at least 2 different set of boxes in the last
2 years and my observations are that if portage trees (and use flags) are in
sync, no problem of this sort occurs. 

Given the first comment here, it's not clear to me if the build box and the
binary box are in sync wrt to portage tree state.