There used to be a section merely showing the tar(1) command extyracting the pre-downloaded portage snapshot into the new filesystem. Today, the handbook says it is preferred to run emerge --sync and teh section is gone! No, ran out of my bandwitch already by that time because I already downloaded the stage3* and portage-snapshot* files from an ftp server. So, I was definitely not going to do "emerge --sync". Please bring the section back. The files are being placed daily on all mirrors, I believe they are still included on installation media, and for a good reason. Hint: bug #123678 ?
The portage snapshot is installed through emerge-webrsync. There is no reference to the portage-snapshot tarballs anymore in the handbook, so you shouldn't really have needed to download it yourself. The --sync is clearly marked optional, so you don't have to run it.
I am installing some VPS and got back to this issue. emerge-webrsync is weird and give useless messages. Why does it download many times the cumulative snapshots? Actually, did it fetch any? I ahev working IPv4 connection, maybe and issue is that I did not defined DNS IP's yet. # emerge-webrsync Fetching most recent snapshot ... Trying to retrieve 20131219 snapshot from rsync://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.gz.md5sum ... Trying to retrieve 20131219 snapshot from rsync://gentoo.mirror.dkm.cz/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.gz.md5sum ... Trying to retrieve 20131219 snapshot from ftp://gentoo.mirror.web4u.cz ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131219.tar.gz.md5sum ... 20131219 snapshot was not found Trying to retrieve 20131218 snapshot from rsync://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.gz.md5sum ... Trying to retrieve 20131218 snapshot from rsync://gentoo.mirror.dkm.cz/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.gz.md5sum ... Trying to retrieve 20131218 snapshot from ftp://gentoo.mirror.web4u.cz ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131218.tar.gz.md5sum ... 20131218 snapshot was not found Trying to retrieve 20131217 snapshot from rsync://ftp.fi.muni.cz/pub/linux/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.gz.md5sum ... Trying to retrieve 20131217 snapshot from rsync://gentoo.mirror.dkm.cz/gentoo ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.xz.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.bz2.md5sum ... Fetching file portage-20131217.tar.gz.md5sum ... Again, am going to extract the protage snapshot myself, it is just faster and clearer. Please reopen.
It looks like emerge-webrsync cannot find snapshots for your mirrors. If that is the case, it should be a bugreport for emerge-webrsync. I did two installations today (one ARM one x86_64) both worked well. The move away from the extraction was discussed on the development mailinglists and was all agreed to move to emerge-webrsync. So I'd rather not reopen. I will document the approach in the FAQ, is that ok?
