Here's a snippet from #gentoo-portage: <eradicator> where / how does portage cahce information about what binary packages ara available to it? I have a few systems that share their PKGDIR (over nfs). I use one of them to compile the code, and the others I emerge with the -k flag, but a lot of the time emerge wants to recompile rather than using the binary package. Is this a bug, or do I need to do something to let portage know there's new binary packages available? <AetherFoo> good question! where is the package dir? <eradicator> it's in a non-standard location <eradicator> /usr/local/download/portage/packages-pentium2 <AetherFoo> ok, well, each copy of portage has it's own var directory, I think that may be were portage stores that info (don't quote me I'm not sure) <eradicator> I scoured through /var/cache and /var/db/pkg but I didn't see anything that looked like it was related to binary package information <AetherFoo> eradicator: well, I'd file a bug, the relavent code in portage seems to be the class "binarytree" and it looks like it's suppose to scan the pkg_dir for available packages, so if it's not doing this when there's new packages or it's not doing this correct each time then it might be a bug <eradicator> ok thanks /usr/local/download/portage/packages-pentium2/All $ emerge info Portage 2.0.49-r7 (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 Pentium II (Deschutes) ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=pentium2 -mcpu=pentium2 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -falign-funct ions=4 -falign-jumps=4 -falign-loops=4" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/co nfig /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium2 -mcpu=pentium2 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -falign-fun ctions=4 -falign-jumps=4 -falign-loops=4" DISTDIR="/usr/local/download/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache autoaddcvs sandbox buildpkg userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/d istributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/local/download/portage/packages-pentium2" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/download/portage" SYNC="rsync://192.168.0.1/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 oss apm avi crypt cups encode foomaticdb gif jpeg libg++ mad mikmod mmx mp eg ncurses nls pdflib png quicktime spell truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib directfb gtkht ml alsa gdbm berkdb slang readline arts tetex aalib nas bonobo svga ggi tcltk java guile mysql postgres X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl perl python esd imlib oggvorbis gnome gtk qt kde motif opengl mozilla gphoto2 cdr scanner acl acpi amd apache2 atla s bindist curl dga dnd doc dvb dvd emacs ethereal evo fbcon flash gb gd gd-external gnomedb gps gtk2 icc imagemagick imap innodb ipv6 jikes joystick junit justify ker beros lcms ldam leim libgda lirc mbox md5sum mng mozaccess mozcalendar mozctl mozin terfaceinfo mozp3p mozsvg mozxmlterm mpi mule objc odbc offensive openal parse-cloc ks pda php pic plotutils pnp ppds qhull rplay ruby samba sasl slp snmp socks5 sox s qlite tiff trusted type1 usb v4l wmf wxwindows Xaw3d xinerama xml xvid"
I haven't seen this problem in a while now, so I'm guessing it's fixed.