I don't know why /usr/portage/packages is root:root with no read permission instead of portage:portage with group readable in the first place - so maybe that should be changed also, but there seems to be another bug that's revealed since portage group can't read /usr/portage/packages. See steps to reproduce for clearer description. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Run as a non-root user in the portage group (ensure that you have at least one binpkg available so /usr/portage/packages exists): 1. PKGDIR=. emerge -pK gcc 2. ROOT=. PKGDIR=. emerge -pK gcc Actual Results: Without ROOT=., it fails (as it should): there are no ebuilds to satisfy "sys-devel/gcc". With ROOT=. it fails: Calculating dependencies -Permission denied: '/usr/portage/packages' Expected Results: Both results should be there are no ebuilds to satisfy "sys-devel/gcc". There shouldn't be any (attempted) access to /usr/portage/packages since PKGDIR is set emerge --info still reports the correct PKGDIR as expected. If /usr/portage/packages is removed or set to be readable to the user in question, it turns out that the specified PKGDIR is still being used, as packages in PKGDIR are reported (I used less instead of gcc because I was missing binary versions of deps for gcc): Calculating dependencies... done! [binary N ] sys-libs/gpm-1.20.5 to /home/eitan/soc/git/ USE="(-selinux)" [binary N ] sys-libs/ncurses-5.6-r2 to /home/eitan/soc/git/ USE="gpm unicode -debug -doc -minimal -nocxx -profile -trace" [binary N ] sys-apps/less-418 to /home/eitan/soc/git/ USE="unicode"
# emerge -V Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/amd64/2008.0, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.8_p20080602-r1, 2.6.29-tuxonice-r3 x86_64)
