An interesting problem appeared after updating my openafs installation to version 1.4.0. Many system scripts ended in errors, the revdep-rebuild ended without errors but so fast that it could not possibly have done anything, and so on. It turned out the reason for all this breakage was that utilities like xargs or find require a shared library /usr/afsws/lib/pam_afs.so.1. This can be confirmed by running ldd. This library location changed with more recent openafs ebuilds. It seems that the ebuild file for findutils incorrectly hardwires this library location when setting the LIBS variable in the src_compile function. Thanks for taking openafs into account though, it's very useful. A simple workaround before a fix is available is a symbolic link to the old library location.
Could you try re-emerging findutils without the "afs" USE-flag? I have the feeling you're running findutils-4.1.20-r1, which had faulty afs support (which has simply been removed in newer findutils, as "faulty" meant it didn't do anything but linking with a library it doesn't use). If this solves the problem, I will see if stabilization of >findutils-4.1.20-r1 is possible
Every findutils release is broken in some way. 4.1.20-r1 is only broken for AFS, which is why we have that one stable.
Could we make a findutils-4.1.20-r2 that just drops afs-support then? It would prevent further occurences of this bug, but not introduce any errors for people who haven't got the afs-useflag on anyway now. (And the afs-support wasn't doing anything but linking to an unused library anyway...)
If you think that'll help, go ahead.
Someone on the x86-team looked at the afs-removal patch and okayed fast stabilization. ciaranm, are you ok with this patch as well?
Created attachment 75323 [details, diff] Patch to remove afs-support from the currently stable findutils
Looks good. You should drop the keywords to ~arch though and add the arch teams to this bug -- there's a vague chance that they might have legit reasons for not wanting to stable it.
Patch applied to tree and marked stable (see bug #116424). Fixed