The currently stable timezone-data-2014a installs a symlink /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix -> . which causes some programs to hang, because they loop endlessly through the zoneinfo directories. I have found this symlink on all my gentoo boxes, some really old with a lot of updates, some rather new. I have not found this symlink on any other distribution, I checked archlinux, Ubuntu and Fedora. On Fedora this is a actual directory. Of course the programs are at fault here too for their endless loops, but as no other distribution is using this symlink, I assume it could be removed. Program not working here: http://vandyke.com/download/securecrt/download.html When removing the symlink "SecureCRT" works fine and I didn't encounter any issue with other programs yet. Reproducible: Always Portage 2.2.8-r1 (default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop, gcc-4.7.3, glibc-2.17, 3.9.11-ck-r1 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-3.9.11-ck-r1-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i7-4770_CPU_@_3.40GHz-with-gentoo-2.2 KiB Mem: 32893052 total, 18093092 free KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 free Timestamp of tree: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 03:45:01 +0000 ld GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.23.2 app-shells/bash: 4.2_p45 dev-java/java-config: 2.2.0 dev-lang/python: 2.7.6, 3.3.3 dev-util/cmake: 2.8.12.2 dev-util/pkgconfig: 0.28 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.2 sys-apps/openrc: 0.12.4 sys-apps/sandbox: 2.6-r1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.69 sys-devel/automake: 1.11.6, 1.12.6, 1.13.4 sys-devel/binutils: 2.23.2 sys-devel/gcc: 4.7.3-r1 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.7.3 sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.2 sys-devel/make: 3.82-r4 sys-kernel/linux-headers: 3.9 (virtual/os-headers) sys-libs/glibc: 2.17 Repositories: gentoo x-portage steam-overlay sabayon hossie-overlay pipelight ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" ACCEPT_LICENSE="*" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5.5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/splash /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync news parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync" FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.noris.net/gentoo" LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed" MAKEOPTS="-j8" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage /var/lib/layman/steam /var/lib/layman/sabayon /var/lib/layman/hossie-overlay /var/lib/layman/pipelight" SYNC="rsync://lanserv/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 berkdb bluray branding bzip2 cairo cdda cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cryptsetup cups cxx dbus dri dts dvd dvdr emboss encode exif fam firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk iconv icu ipv6 jpeg lcms ldap libnotify mad mmx mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg multilib ncurses nls nptl ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf png policykit ppds pulseaudio qt3support qt4 readline sdl session spell sse sse2 ssl ssse3 startup-notification svg symlink tcpd tiff truetype udev udisks unicode upower usb vdpau vorbis wxwidgets x264 xcb xcomposite xml xv xvid zlib" ABI_X86="64" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" CAMERAS="ptp2" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="cpu cpufreq df hddtemp interface irq load memory network rrdtool sensors swap syslog" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev joystick keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" LINGUAS="de en_US" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-5" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python2_7" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_3" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby19 ruby20" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia vesa" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, USE_PYTHON
What programs?
Like mentioned above I found this in SecureCRT: http://vandyke.com/download/securecrt/download.html If needed, I can reproduce an strace showing the endloss loop of "posix" directories in the syscalls.
"SecureCRT" is not under our control. It is not a Gentoo project or even a package in the tree.
postgresql also suffers from such an issue. IIRC there is a bug about it (and I believe upstream doesn't see it as a valid bug, too), but this bug still has not been resolved at this time, ie, a new postgresql[server] install with default 'emerge --config' will still fail to launch: # /etc/init.d/postgresql-9.1 start * /run/postgresql: correcting mode * Starting PostgreSQL ... * start-stop-daemon: did not create a valid pid in `/var/lib/postgresql/9.1/data/postmaster.pid' * Check the log for a possible explanation of the above error. The log may be * /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/data/postmaster.log * Or wherever you configured PostgreSQL 9.1 log messages to be sent. [ !! ] * ERROR: postgresql-9.1 failed to start # tail /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/data/postmaster.log FATAL: exceeded maxAllocatedDescs (16) while trying to open directory "/usr/share/zoneinfo" If 'posix' was a directory containing simlinks to all of the other files in /usr/share/zoneinfo (except itself) , instead of a symlink-to-. , we wouldn't get any such infinite loops. Maybe not the most ideal setup but it would work.
