I have the following line in my crontab: 0 */8 * * * /root/bin/update_portage and the content of /root/bin/update_portage is: #!/bin/sh nice -n 19 emerge rsync > /dev/null 2>&1 if [ $(nice -n 19 emerge -puUD world |wc -l) -ne 5 ] then nice -n 19 emerge -puUD world |/bin/mail -s "New system updates available" ehmsen fi This worked great until I update to the portage 2.0.50-preXX series. Now the mails I receives, contains output like the following: eutils flag-o-matic eutils flag-o-matic eutils flag-o-matic eutils flag-o-matic (repeated about 100 times) These are the packages that I would merge, in order: Calculating world dependencies ^H^H ...done! [ebuild U ] media-sound/alsa-tools-1.0.1 [1.0.0_rc2] But when I do an 'nice -n 19 emerge -puUD world' from a normal shell, it all works like a charm. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: Portage 2.0.50_pre16 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.3_pre20040117-r0, 2.6.1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.1 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP1900+ Gentoo Base System version 1.4.3.12 ccache version 2.3 [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.7.8 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-mcpu=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache notitles sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.linux.no/ " MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="3dnow X alsa amd apache2 apm avi berkdb cdr crypt cups curl doc emacs emacs-w3 encode faad fam fbcon flac foomaticdb freetype fs gdbm gif gtk gtk2 guile imagemagick imap imlib imlib2 ipv6 jabber java javascript jpeg libg++ libwww mad maildir mbox mikmod mmx motif mozilla mpeg mpeg4 ncurses nls nptl oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png postgres python qt quicktime readline samba scanner sdl slang spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype type1 unicode usb x86 xml xml2 xmms xv xvid zlib"
portage 2.0.50_preX has extra debugging on because ... well it's a dev version