Knowledge Base:Emerge fails with permission denied on make.conf

Synopsis
Any activity using emerge, such as emerge --info, fails with the following error:

Environment
This article is applicable to Gentoo Linux systems using a selinux profile:

SELinux profiles always end with.

Analysis
This is to be expected when not using the sysadm_r role. Any Portage related activity requires that the sysadm_r role be used; this is because other roles have no access to the file (which should be labeled  ).

Resolution
Verify that the current context is within the  role (second part of the context):

If this is not the case, use newrole to switch roles after re-authenticating with a personal password: