Bugzilla Bug 30106

After an emerge sync and emerge patch, I got the following output:

>>> emerge (1 of 3) sys-devel/patch-2.5.9 to /
>>> Downloading http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.5.9.tar.gz
--21:58:12--  http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/patch/patch-2.5.9.tar.gz
           => `/usr/portage/distfiles/patch-2.5.9.tar.gz'
Resolving alpha.gnu.org... done.
Connecting to alpha.gnu.org[199.232.41.11]:80...  


The server alpha.gnu.org was never connected.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
emerge patch
Actual Results:  
see above

Expected Results:  
patch should be installed

Portage 2.0.49-r3 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1, 2.4.20-gentoo-r5)
============================================================
=====
System uname: 2.4.20-gentoo-r5 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-O3 -march=i686 -funroll-loops -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /
usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=i686 -funroll-loops -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="sandbox ccache"
GENTOO_MIRRORS=""
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="x86 oss apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx 
mpeg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib gdbm berkdb slang 
readline arts svga java sdl gpm tcpd pam ssl perl python esd imlib oggvorbis motif opengl X qt kde 
-gtk -gnome -alsa"

Also works for me.

I see your problem though.  You need to set 

GENTOO_MIRRORS to something reasonable in /etc/make.conf

I have:

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"

changing SRC_URI to use mirror://gnu/ since alph.gnu.org sucks

fixed in cvs