Bug 37823 – using `emerge -b <pkg>` causes newer version to be auto-cleaned in portage 2.0.49-r21

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-10 13:37:06 UTC]

The current vesion of portage has a serious bug that can leave your system in unusable state. In fact, removing the old version of a package and replacing it for a newer one is not handled in a safe way, since it may happend that you end with no version of the package installed.

For example, I had version 1.0.37 of gentoolkit installed. I've updated to version 1.0.38 and I had end with no version installed. 

The worst of it, is that this happend to me with portage itself, so I had to reinstall it by hand (from a .tar.bz2 file)

To see the problem I'm sending to you the output of

emerge -b gentoolkit

when gentoolkit 1.0.38 was alredy installed. As you can see, the same files that are installed, get removed after that, so you end with no file installled.

Please FIX THIS SERIOUS BUG SOON or many Gentoo users will end up with a system in unsable state and will have to reinstall it from scratch.





Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.emerge -b gentoolkit
2.(when gentoolkit is already installed)
3.
Actual Results:  
You end up with no gentoolkit installed 

Expected Results:  
It should recompile and install gentoolkit

[Comment 1 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-10 13:40:03 UTC]

Created attachment 23566 [details]
emerge -b gentoolkit output

[Comment 2 Marius Mauch (RETIRED) 2004-01-10 14:29:24 UTC]

try /usr/lib/portage/bin/fix-db.py or fix-db.pl and see if that fixes it.

[Comment 3 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-10 14:51:01 UTC]

Created attachment 23569 [details]
fix-db.pl output

[Comment 4 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-10 14:51:58 UTC]

Created attachment 23570 [details]
fix-db.py output

[Comment 5 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-10 14:55:11 UTC]

Using fix-db.pl and fix-db.py as suggested did NOT fix the problem.
fix-db.pl ran with out errors. On the other hand fix-db.py output some anoying messages saying the counter is corrupt (I don't understand what do they mean)
What are these scripts supposed to do? What is the difference between them?

Is there some documentation about the portage internals? (for example: what are these counters?)

[Comment 6 Nicholas Jones (RETIRED) 2004-01-11 17:45:59 UTC]

Here's my current solution. This will end up on 2.0.50's next pre.

http://gentoo.twobit.net/portage/portage.py-counterfix-040111.diff

[Comment 7 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-11 18:34:59 UTC]

The patch in comment #6 did fixed this problem.
Thank you !
I've test it against portage-2.0.50_pre12. However 
hunk #7 was rejected by patch

[Comment 8 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-01-11 18:36:36 UTC]

Created attachment 23650 [details]
rejected hunk from patch

[Comment 9 Pablo De Nápoli 2004-02-07 14:58:18 UTC]

Now that portage-2.0.50 is stable, we can close this bug
(since the bug-fix is included)