Blue Knight Sojourn of the Mind

If you have tried to update your system lately you might have come against this bug. When you try to “emerge –update world” you get a block all the time on a particular update of e2fsprogs.

Solving this block is easy, but took a lot of searching and then a test or two on a VirtualMachine (VirtualBox). The block occurs with the program of e2fsprogs and e2fsprogs-libs. This is when trying to update to version 1.41.2.

The block involves two very important libraries which is:

sys-libs/com_err
sys-libs/ss

These are very important libraries so it is important on how you handle their removal. This has been proven to work on virtual systems and a few new systems that I am building now. But it is important that you follow the steps accordingly.

1. emerge e2fsprogs –pretend
   Now this will give you the blocks and also list all the programs that it will compile for you on a new e2fsprogs install. When you do the next stem make sure all those programs are pulled in, if not add –fetchonly for the software that your system wants.
2. emerge –fetchonly e2fsprogs
   This will pre-fetch all the programs that are needed to install the new version of e2fsprogs, the reason that is needed is that you will loose the ability to connect to anywhere as soon as you follow the next two setps, and the only way to rescue that is to have the files to compile from on your system.
3. emerge –unmerge ss
4. emerge –unmerge com_err
5. emerge –unmerge e2fsprogs
   Now your system is a bit crippled so you MUST!!! do an emerge of e2fsprogs again immediately before you do anything else.
6. emerge e2fsprogs

That is it, your system is updated for the packages and you are good to go!