Known Problems

This Known Problems page tries to make it more clear towards our end-users which wide spread problems are currently going on in Gentoo Linux, especially with packages coming from the Portage tree. For each problem we know about, we will attempt to document why the problem is happening, which temporary fixes are available and what we are waiting for for it to be resolved; that way users can continue without waiting for certain things to happen. This isn't meant to replace news items, but rather list problems that aren't important enough to be distributed as a news item. It is a community-driven documentation effort, so it may miss things and therefore feel free to help.

Symptoms
Merging some packages may lead to a failure of running aclocal:

Upon then inspecting the aclocal.out file you will find the error:

Cause
As documented at changes in automake release the  macro has deprecated in automake 1.13 and has been replaced by. This version was in the tree for some time, but it only got recently unmasked and allowed to be used in an eclass.

Temporary Fixes

 * Emerge the failing packages again by appending  in front, this will cause them to use the previous version:


 * Alternatively, you can temporarily mask the new automake and unmerge it if too many packages are failing because of it; don't forget to unmask it later.

Resolution
When such a failing package occurs, people should file a bug for that package (make sure none exists already) and block ; that way, maintainers can deal with the problem such that eventually all packages are fixed and then we can upgrade to the version 1.13 of automake. Make sure to provide enough details (emerge --info) and attach the relevant files.

Symptons
When you try to  you get output similar to the following:

Cause
lddtree, a recursive version of ldd has changed its output format; this has been reported in. Genkernel, as a result, is unable to parse this new format since it hasn't been adapted to it yet. To avoid the new lddtree being installed together with genkernel, a blocker has been placed by the genkernel maintainers.

Temporary Fixes
This can be temporarily fixed by masking the versions of pax-utils where the output has changed, then emerge genkernel again:

Don't forget to remove the mask once the bug is resolved.

Resolution
Wait for to resolve, which requires the genkernel maintainers to correct the parsing; this may take some time as the genkernel team is undermanned, help is welcome.