When I try to emerge -u gettext I get the following: --------------------------- ACCESS VIOLATION SUMMARY --------------------------- LOG FILE = "/tmp/sandbox-sys-devel_-_gettext-0.12.1-6924.log" unlink: /usr/lib/cf20417/conftest9012345 unlink: /usr/lib/cf20417/conftest9012346 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The contents of the file are the same as the above two failed unlink messages. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge -u gettext Actual Results: It appeared to do the make, and even the make install, but when it failed to unlink the files it mentioned, it didn't update whatever was necessary for a subsequent emerge -up gettext to reveal that it was up to date. Expected Results: It should have completely installed the newest version of gettext, removed the files it mentioned, and then did whatever it needed to satisfy portage so that an emerge -up gettext would reveal that it was up to date.
Now I feel stupid :) The problem was that I moved /usr to a sub-directory of another partition and symlinked it back to /usr a while back. Now the relative paths in /usr/bin seem to be pointing to the wrong location, so the invocation of /usr/bin/unlink that should have called /bin/unlink was failing. When /bin was in the path before /usr/bin and ulink was invoked manually it would of course work. But when programs specifically called /usr/bin/unlink it failed for certain working directories. By changing the links from ../../whatever to /bin/whatever it fixed the problem.
