On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:02 AM, Mark Knecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <SNIP> > > > > > gandalf ~ # slocate MERGING-pam > > /var/db/pkg/sys-libs/-MERGING-pam-0.99.8.1-r1 > > gandalf ~ # > > > > I'm never taken the time to understand exactly how portage keeps track > of what is on a system so I'm now curious what represents an > 'installed' package. Is it simply that there is a directory located > under /var/db/pkg? > > Can I safely remove this directory? As a test I moved it elsewhere and > now eix-test-obsolete doesn't complain. I presume at this point I can > delete it. there's nothing in the directory as best I can tell and the > version number does not match the version of pam currently install. > > Thanks in advance, > Mark >
So, finishing this topic off on my own for now this Gentoo doc: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1 states the following: <QUOTE> Portage Database Portage stores the state of your system (what packages are installed, what files belong to which package, ...) in /var/db/pkg. Do not alter these files manually! It might break Portage's knowledge of your system. </QUOTE> So, reading between the lines, it seems that if someone knows wht they are doing then they can change files in this directory. In my case the -MERGING directory had no files in it and didn't match the installed version of pam. I removed it and now eix-test-obsolete is happy. Unless someone comes up with some addition info on things I should do to clean this up more completely I figure I got a little bit of education which is cool. Sorry for the noise, Mark -- [email protected] mailing list
