>>> Safely unmerging already-installed instance... !!! //var/db/pkg/dev-lang/php-4.1.1/php-4.1.1-r1.ebuild not found. !!! pkg_prerm() script failed; exiting. I have php-4.1.1 installed on this machine. I'm adding mcrypt and mhash to php, so I upped the revision on the php ebuild, and (using portage 1.8.9_pre4) ran ebuild php-4.1.1-r1 package and ebuild php-4.1.1-r1 merge. The error was at the end of the "merge" command. The new revision should be merged, although I note that /var/db/pkg/dev-lang/php-4.1.1 has php-4.1.1.ebuild in it, _not_ php-4.1.1-r1.ebuild. I just checked the mtime of one of the files that "merge" should have installed, and it's correct for -r1. Nonetheless, none of the entries in /var/db/pkg/dev-lang/php-4.1.1 were updated.
fixed in portage-1.8.9_pre5
*** Bug 21725 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***