I'm marking this as "major" because the shadow package update was for security fixes. dendarii etc # emerge -uNDp shadow These are the packages that would be merged, in order: Calculating dependencies... done! [blocks B ] sys-apps/pam-login (is blocking sys-apps/shadow-4.0.15-r2) [ebuild U ] sys-apps/shadow-4.0.15-r2 [4.0.14-r1] dendarii etc # equery l pam-login [ Searching for package 'pam-login' in all categories among: ] * installed packages [I--] [ ] sys-apps/pam-login-4.0.14 (0) dendarii etc # emerge --info Portage 2.1-r1 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.3.6, glibc-2.3.6-r4, 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1900+ Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 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-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r2 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r2 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" LANG="en_US.iso885915" LC_ALL="en_US" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 3dnow 3dnowext X aac alsa apache2 apm avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cli crypt cups curl dri eds emboss encode esd flac foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif glut gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml hardenedphp imagemagick imlib isdnlog jabber java jpeg kde libg++ libwww logrotate mad mikmod mmx mmxext motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png postgres pppd python qt quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sse ssl svg tcpd threads tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts vhosts vorbis win32codecs xine xml xml2 xmms xorg xv zlib elibc_glibc kernel_linux userland_GNU" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY This is preventing "emerge -uND world" (which is annoying). It's also happening on a 2006.0 sparc box I am presently building from scratch.
This is expected behavior. The pam-login package is now obsolete as shadow itself includes a pam aware login. To update smoothly I would suggest doing the following.. emerge -B shadow && emerge -C pam-login && emerge -K shadow