When updating a system which has not been updated in seven months or so, I hit the following: There was net-mail/cmd5checkpw-0.30-r1 installed in the system (since june 2018). It got updated today to net-mail/cmd5checkpw-0.30-r2. With this new version, dependency on acct-user/cmd5checkpw-0 came. The package acct-user/cmd5checkpw-0 got installed, but emerge was complaining * Messages for package acct-user/cmd5checkpw-0: * Updating groups for user 'cmd5checkpw' ... * - Groups: nofiles * There was an error when attempting to update the groups for cmd5checkpw * Please update it manually on your system (as root): * usermod -g nofiles -G "cmd5checkpw" * Updating comment for user 'cmd5checkpw' ... * - Comment: User for cmd5checkpw The command emerge wants me to run does not make sense: usermod -g nofiles -G "cmd5checkpw" It seems it is the very command emerge executed (and failed). The message comes from the end of gentoo/eclass/user.eclass backtracking: - the command that is run: (line 563) usermod "${opts[@]}" "${euser}" - ${euser} is set correctly to "cmd5checkpw" - ${opts[@]} is set incorrectly - opts array is set on line 548: local opts=( -g "${defgroup}" -G "${exgroups}" ) - ${exgroups} was obviously empty Not sure if this is an issue with the user.eclass or with the acct-user/cmd5checkpw-0 package
...but empty is correct: usermod -g nofiles -G '' "cmd5checkpw" works just fine for me. There is a known problem (bug #702102) of failing to add quoting in error output but the command itself should pass arguments correctly. Don't you have anything more specific? I suppose there should be the error output from usermod above that.
Bug is now 2 years open without reply. I am closing here. Feel free to re-open, if problem persists.