I ran into this problem while trying to both fetch necessary distfiles, and compile previously fetched packages concurrently. While xfree was compiling, I was pulling the source for other packages for later compilation away from broadband. When I came across another package which had xfree as a prereq, it checked off the distfiles as being already downloaded, and continued to fetch the other necessary files. However, the build for xfree had suddenly died with many `File not found' errors. This is because /var/tmp/portage/xfree-4.3.0-r3/work/ was removed. Obviously this leaves the build process in an unworkable state. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Begin merging a port which is a dependency for another port. 2. emerge --fetchonly the port which depends on the currently merging port. 3. Watch the build process die. Expected Results: The --fetchonly option should leave the /var/tmp.../work/ directory of fetched packages in tact, so that it doesn't trample on a currently building dependency. I would paste it, but it's on a different box. The relevant info is. AUTOCLEAN can be set to yes or no portage=2.0.48-r1 1.4-ppc profile
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 19999 ***
