Bug 19949 – After emerge sync, I'm told portage needs updating, but I can't b/c there's something up with C++?

• Product: Gentoo Release Media
• Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE

[Description Nelson 2003-04-25 12:07:47 UTC]

I'm booting off the live cd for 1.4 RC4, using the 800X600 boot option b/c my
laptop screen doesn't support 1024X768, and I get to the emerge sync step in the
directions, after using the stage 1 tarball.  That goes fine.  However, when
that finishes, I get a message to the effect of "portage needs updating, you
should update it before you do anything else."  So I do an emerge portage, and
it fails when it's about to start compiling with this error:

[lots of checking went fine, then this]
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... /lib/cpp
configure: error: C++ preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check

!!! ERROR: sys-libs/ncurses-5.3-r1 failed.
!!! Function econf, Line 273, Exitcode 1
!!! econf failed

Then I tried to emerge ncurses.  This failed as well, with the same message.

checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... /lib/cpp
configure: error: C++ preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check

!!! ERROR: sys-libs/ncurses-5.3-r1 failed.
!!! Function econf, Line 273, Exitcode 1
!!! econf failed

OK, maybe I'm just being dumb... there isn't a /lib/cpp as far as I can tell. 
This seems like this would be easy to fix if I was l33t.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
0. Boot using the 800 boot option from the 1.4 RC4 liveCD
1. Use the stage 1 tarball
2. emerge sync
3. emerge portage

Actual Results:  
I successfully reproduced this in exactly the same way as described.

Expected Results:  
Um, portage should have emerged properly, there shouldn't have been errors in
the C++ preprocessor, /lib/cpp should be sane, etc.

This is a Dell Latitude slimline laptop, running off a Pentium III.

[Comment 1 Nelson 2003-04-25 12:20:57 UTC]

ok, it turns out that in /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-linux-gnu/3.2.2/ there is a "cpp0" but no plain old "cpp".  So my l33t friend told me to "for the fun of it, go to /lib and ln -s /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-linux-gnu/3.2.2/cpp0 cpp".  Here goes... and there's already a cpp in /lib/ ... figures.  Why couldn't I find it before?  Well, I was being retarded, and I typed in a search for /lib/cpp in the non-chrooted environment on my laptop, I've been running most of the installation through ssh off my desktop.  So you can ignore the line about /lib/cpp not existing.

[Comment 2 Caleb Tennis (RETIRED) 2003-05-15 16:37:16 UTC]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 19948 ***