Re: Strange Portage messages

On Tue, Jun 9, 2026 at 12:39=E2=80=AFPM Dr Rainer Woitok
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> After managing to upgrade Python in three steps  almost without any pro-
> blems I meanwhile again synced Portage  and updated "@world".   However,
> this resulted in several slightly mysterious Portage messages which left
> me puzzled.
>
>    * File "/var/log/portage/elog/summary.log":
>
>      ...
>      >>> Messages generated by process 78898 on 2026-06-06 15:11:20 CEST =
for package dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7:
>
>      WARN: preinst
>      None of the installed packages claim the file(s).
>
>      Package 'dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7' merged despite file collisions.
>      If necessary, refer to your elog messages for the whole content of t=
he
>      above message.
>
>      >>> Messages generated by process 78898 on 2026-06-06 15:11:58 CEST =
for package dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1:
>
>      WARN: preinst
>      None of the installed packages claim the file(s).
>
>      Package 'dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1' merged despite file collision=
s.
>      If necessary, refer to your elog messages for the whole content of t=
he
>      above message.
>
>    * File "/var/log/portage/build/dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7:20260606-131=
101.log":
>
>      >>> Extracting info
>       * Package:    dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7:2.72
>       * Repository: gentoo
>       * USE:        amd64 elibc_glibc abi_x86_64 kernel_linux
>       * FEATURES:   network-sandbox preserve-libs sandbox userpriv usersa=
ndbox
>      >>> Extracting dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7
>       * This package will overwrite one or more files that may belong to =
other
>       * packages (see list below).
>       *
>       * Detected file collision(s):
>       *
>       *         /usr/share/autoconf-2.72/info/dir
>       *
>       * Searching all installed packages for file collisions...
>       *
>       * Press Ctrl-C to Stop
>       *
>       * None of the installed packages claim the file(s).
>       *
>       * Package 'dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7' merged despite file collisio=
ns.
>       * If necessary, refer to your elog messages for the whole content o=
f the
>       * above message.
>
> What precisely does that mean?   A collision regarding file "/usr/share/
> autoconf-2.72/info/dir" which is not claimed by any other package?
>
>    * File "/var/log/portage/build/dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1:20260606-1=
31139.log":
>
>      >>> Extracting info
>       * Package:    dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1:1.18
>       * Repository: gentoo
>       * USE:        amd64 elibc_glibc abi_x86_64 kernel_linux
>       * FEATURES:   network-sandbox preserve-libs sandbox userpriv usersa=
ndbox
>      >>> Extracting dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1
>       * This package will overwrite one or more files that may belong to =
other
>       * packages (see list below).
>       *
>       * Detected file collision(s):
>       *
>       *         /usr/share/automake-1.18.1/info/dir
>       *
>       * Searching all installed packages for file collisions...
>       *
>       * Press Ctrl-C to Stop
>       *
>       * None of the installed packages claim the file(s).
>       *
>       * Package 'dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1' merged despite file collis=
ions.
>       * If necessary, refer to your elog messages for the whole content o=
f the
>       * above message.
>
> Same here.   And according to "equery"  both packages  do provide "info"
> files, and according to "ls" they are different:
>
>    $ equery --no-color --no-pipe files --filter=3Dobj \
>      dev-build/automake-1.18.1-r1 dev-build/autoconf-2.72-r7 |
>      grep /info/dir
>    /usr/share/automake-1.18.1/info/dir
>    /usr/share/autoconf-2.72/info/dir
>    $ ls -l automake-1.18.1/info/dir autoconf-2.72/info/dir
>    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1969 2026-06-04 11:13 autoconf-2.72/info/dir
>    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1013 2026-06-04 11:13 automake-1.18.1/info/dir
>    $
>
> Could anybody please shed some light on this?
>
> Puzzled,
>  Rainer

I saw similar collision warnings (automake-1.18.1-r1 and portage-3.0.79-r1)=
.

Fortunately in both cases no installed packages claimed the file,
which would (AFAIK) actually block the emerge.

I suspect what happened is related to the revbumps: automake got a
change to not compress the Info file:

    b33a6940d277 (dev-build/automake: Don't compress the Info dir
file, 2026-06-03)

Portage's revbump is just a new patch (?), and the collisions detected
were significant (some scripts and modules and also the pycache files)
at 2.9k files out of 3.1k listed by "equery files" (qlist shows 3.6k,
though).

I'm no expert, but essentially I think Portage got slightly confused
about which files were being merged and who owned what? It seems
relatively harmless in this case, but making sure it didn't overwrite
a file you placed there would be smart.

Advice from folks who know better what occurred welcome :)

--=20
D. Ben Knoble