With portage as it is in version 2.1, unattended upgrades are impossible due to the fact that emerge --update world stops so frequently. The following needs to be the case: 1) Multiple attmepts need to be made (possibly after a timeout) to merge a package. This shouldn't fix any problem, but more often than not it does, for reasons beyond my understanding. 2) If a package still cannot be merged, portage should continue with other updates that do not depend on the failed update. 3) User intervention should never be requested during the --update world process. License agreements are the biggest problem. Perhaps there could be a list of licenses to which the user has already agreed? If there are licenses which need to be agreed to, this should be done before any compilation of packages starts. Other things, such as requesting removable media, need to be handled differently. I suggest not updating these at all unless a separate flag is supplied to portage to tell it to do so. I appreciate that these may involve some sizeable changes to portage, but something needs to be done about this. In the process of updating a box, I have left it to merge packages several times now only to find it failed about ten minutes after I left it and has since been doing nothing. Gentoo should be striving for better than this.
(In reply to comment #0) > 1) Multiple attmepts need to be made (possibly after a timeout) to merge a > package. This shouldn't fix any problem, but more often than not it does, for > reasons beyond my understanding. That's usually indicative a hardware problem. > 2) If a package still cannot be merged, portage should continue with other > updates that do not depend on the failed update. That will be addressed by bug 12768. > 3) User intervention should never be requested during the --update world > process. License agreements are the biggest problem. Perhaps there could be a > list of licenses to which the user has already agreed? If there are licenses > which need to be agreed to, this should be done before any compilation of > packages starts. Other things, such as requesting removable media, need to be > handled differently. I suggest not updating these at all unless a separate flag > is supplied to portage to tell it to do so. emerge is supposed to be non-interactive when processing a merge list. If that is not the case, then please provide a specific example. > > I appreciate that these may involve some sizeable changes to portage, but > something needs to be done about this. In the process of updating a box, I have > left it to merge packages several times now only to find it failed about ten > minutes after I left it and has since been doing nothing. Gentoo should be > striving for better than this. Packages with stable keywords should always build on the first try. If you change nothing and it builds on another try, then it's usually a hardware. It could also be a timing issue if the build is processed in parallel (MAKEOPTS=-j2 or higher).
(In reply to comment #1) > > 3) User intervention should never be requested during the --update world > > process. License agreements are the biggest problem. Perhaps there could be a > > list of licenses to which the user has already agreed? If there are licenses > > which need to be agreed to, this should be done before any compilation of > > packages starts. Other things, such as requesting removable media, need to be > > handled differently. I suggest not updating these at all unless a separate flag > > is supplied to portage to tell it to do so. > > emerge is supposed to be non-interactive when processing a merge list. If that > is not the case, then please provide a specific example. Games do this... Again, duplicate of Bug 17367 (though, I don't see what's preventing games folks to use ACCEPT_LICENSE right now, don't thing any portage support is needed for this unless you need to do advanced wildcards parsing, grouping of licenses etc.) As for removable media, you can export CDROM_ROOT and copy the contents there. Or, you can just p.mask the upgrade if you don't want to upgrade, as with anything else. If something else than games has interactive emerge, file bugs about those ebuilds, not a generic bug about portage. Finally, if something requires multiple attempts to merge and fails randomly, generally there's something wrong with your hardware (see Bug 20600), or it's parallel make failure, then again file a bug about a specific ebuild, not a generic one. Essentially a multidupe of many bugs, that's why you should be really specific when filing bugs and not file a generic one covering many unrelated issues.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 17367 ***
