cyrus-sasl-2.1.17 fails to emerge due to a missing /usr/portage/dev-libs/cyrus-sasl/files/cyrus-sasl-2.1.17-db4.patch file. epatch fails because it cannot find the file. I updated my local copy of the cvs tree and it does not appear there either. There is however a version of the patch for 2.1.18, but I did not try it in combination with the 2.1.17 ebuild.
Do you need to use 2.1.17? Can you update to 2.1.18? I'd like to drop 2.1.17.
2.1.17 has now been dropped from portage; please use 2.1.18 or subsequent releases.