Bug 952840 – lib/portage/output.py: xtermTitleReset(): assumes HOSTNAME environment variable is present

• Status: UNCONFIRMED
• Product: Portage Development

[Description Aaron Jones 2025-03-28 15:46:17 UTC]

Portage assumes that the HOSTNAME environment variable is present [1], and uses it as part of resetting an xterm window title. This results in nonsense when it is not, as on my systems; it appears as "root@:/your/cwd".

This manifests most obviously during the end of depclean (immediately before returning to the shell) and, based upon reading the source code callers, would manifest during any emerge operation.

I suggest reading /etc/hostname or /proc/sys/kernel/hostname or something instead. Alternatively, have Portage set the HOSTNAME environment variable in its own process when it is started, based on the contents of one of those, if it is missing.

[1] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/portage.git/tree/lib/portage/output.py#n340

[Comment 1 Aaron Jones 2025-03-28 15:47:03 UTC]

Created attachment 923183 [details]
When HOSTNAME is missing from the environment

[Comment 2 Aaron Jones 2025-03-28 15:47:26 UTC]

Created attachment 923184 [details]
When HOSTNAME is manually added to /etc/env.d/

[Comment 3 Aaron Jones 2025-03-28 15:52:07 UTC]

gethostname(2) is another possibility, if there is a Python binding for that.