When you sync your portage, just before it's time for "emerge" to start to update the portage cache, it takes around 2 minutes "pause". Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. See to that you have sys-apps/portage-2.0.51.19 installed 2. emerge sync Actual Results: Number of files: 118786 Number of files transferred: 1341 Total file size: 93620006 bytes Total transferred file size: 2761022 bytes Literal data: 2761022 bytes Matched data: 0 bytes File list size: 2808480 Total bytes sent: 26969 Total bytes received: 3951114 sent 26969 bytes received 3951114 bytes 22797.04 bytes/sec total size is 93620006 speedup is 23.53 <wait for ~2 minutes> >>> Updating Portage cache: 1% Expected Results: Number of files: 118786 Number of files transferred: 1341 Total file size: 93620006 bytes Total transferred file size: 2761022 bytes Literal data: 2761022 bytes Matched data: 0 bytes File list size: 2808480 Total bytes sent: 26969 Total bytes received: 3951114 sent 26969 bytes received 3951114 bytes 22797.04 bytes/sec total size is 93620006 speedup is 23.53 <wait for a few seconds> >>> Updating Portage cache: 1% When checked up with top I notice that rm was doing something and as no one else than I was logged to the machine and it was the root user who used it, it couldn't be anything else than part of the emerge scripts, as this happened each time I have been syncing the portage. --- top --- 16269 root 18 0 1892 620 520 R 2.0 0.1 0:00.18 rm --- eot --- Did a ps ax to get a littel bit more information about the rm that was run --- ps ax --- 16269 pts/1 R+ 0:00 rm -Rf /var/cache/edb/dep//usr/portage/app-accessibility /var/cache/edb/dep//usr/portage/app-accessibility-eclass.cpickle /var/c --- eop --- Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/ppc/2005.0, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.12-gentoo-r1 ppc) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r1 ppc 7447/7457, altivec supported Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 Python: dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1,dev-lang/python-2.4.1-r1 [2.4.1 (#1, Jun 19 2005, 21:00:39)] dev-lang/python: 2.3.4-r1, 2.4.1-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.7 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.18-r1 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="ppc ~ppc" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=7400 -mtune=7400 -maltivec -mabi=altivec -pipe -fno-strict-aliasing" CHOST="powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/bind /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=7400 -mtune=7400 -maltivec -mabi=altivec -pipe -fno-strict-aliasing" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/ ftp://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/gentoo ftp://mirror.pudas.net/gentoo http://ftp.linux.ee/pub/gentoo/distfiles/ ftp://ftp.linux.ee/pub/gentoo/distfiles/ ftp:///ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.sec.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/gentoo/ http://ftp.du.se/pub/os/gentoo" LANG="en_US" LC_ALL="en_US" LINGUAS="en_GB" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/servers/portage" SYNC="rsync://kotiaho.net/gentoo-portage" USE="ppc X alsa altivec berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr crypt cups curl dvd dvdr emacs emboss esd fam ffmpeg fortran gd gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 imlib ipv6 java jpeg kde lame ldap libwww mad mbox mikmod motif mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls nocd nptl ogg oggvorbis opengl pam pdflib perl png python qt readline scanner sdl spell ssl tcpd tiff transcode truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb vorbis xft xine xml2 xmms xprint xv xvid zlib linguas_en_GB userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LDFLAGS NOTE: System is all up to date (~ppc) except glibc, as 2.3.5 don't work with nptl and linuxthreads compiled "together". If this would be a filesystem matter involved, I'm using jfs (don't think so as syncing haven't had this problem untill 2.0.51.19).
2.0.51.22 uses a different method to only remove what needs to be removed after the cache updates have completed.
