Running `emerge --sync` in a cronjob: emerge --sync -q 2 > /dev/null || echo "Failed to emerge --sync" This prints on failure: rsync error: received SIGINT, SIGTERM, or SIGHUP (code 20) at rsync.c(642) [Receiver=3.1.3] timed out >>> Retrying... Well now we'll never know which mirror it tried to connect to ... I wonder if there's a reasonable way to make it quiet by default, but able to print the failed sync server's hostname/IP on stderr so that one can fix the issue.