Egencache
egencache is a tool that (re)builds metadata information for the Portage package database. By default the metadata corresponds to the Gentoo ebuild repository. It is built into Portage and therefore comes installed on every Gentoo system.
Metadata for the Portage package database comes included in Gentoo repository snapshots and, in most circumstances, can be re-downloaded by running an emerge --sync. It will not be downloaded when using git as the Portage sync method, which is more easily possible using repos.conf.
Installation
Every Gentoo system should have egencache installed. Run a quick test by issuing the the --help option as seen in the usage section below.
If usage instructions are not displayed to the terminal there is certainly a problem. It is possible to (re)install Portage by following the Portage installation instructions.
Usage
Invocation
Use the -h/--help option to see the capabilities of egencache:
user $egencache --helpusage: egencache [options] <action> ... [atom] ...
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
Actions:
--update update metadata/md5-cache/ (generate as necessary)
--update-use-local-desc
update the use.local.desc file from metadata.xml
--update-changelogs update the ChangeLog files from SCM logs
--update-pkg-desc-index
update package description index
--update-manifests update manifests
Common options:
--repo REPO name of repo to operate on
--config-root PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT
location of portage config files
--gpg-dir GPG_DIR override the PORTAGE_GPG_DIR variable
--gpg-key GPG_KEY override the PORTAGE_GPG_KEY variable
--portdir PORTDIR override the PORTDIR variable (deprecated in favor of
--repositories-configuration)
--portdir-overlay PORTDIR_OVERLAY
override the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable (deprecated in
favor of --repositories-configuration)
--repositories-configuration REPOSITORIES_CONFIGURATION
override configuration of repositories (in format of
repos.conf)
--sign-manifests <y|n>
manually override layout.conf sign-manifests setting
--strict-manifests <y|n>
manually override "strict" FEATURES setting
--thin-manifests <y|n>
manually override layout.conf thin-manifests setting
--tolerant exit successfully if only minor errors occurred
--ignore-default-opts
do not use the EGENCACHE_DEFAULT_OPTS environment
variable
--write-timestamp write metadata/timestamp.chk as required for rsync
repositories
--update options:
--cache-dir CACHE_DIR
location of the metadata cache
-j JOBS, --jobs JOBS max ebuild processes to spawn
--load-average LOAD_AVERAGE
max load allowed when spawning multiple jobs
--rsync enable rsync stat collision workaround for bug 139134
(use with --update)
--update-use-local-desc options:
--preserve-comments preserve the comments from the existing use.local.desc
file
--use-local-desc-output ULD_OUTPUT
output file for use.local.desc data (or '-' for
stdout)
Rebuilding the metadata cache
In order to rebuild the metadata cache on a system issue the following command:
root #egencache --jobs=9 --update --repo gentooAdjust the number of jobs to be appropriate to each system. The "safe" metric to use with jobs will depend on the processor and system load; if there is no load on the system use the metric of one job per processor thread plus one. In a quad core processor that has two threads per core the equation would result in 9 being set for jobs (2*4+1). In the example above 9 jobs are used as the example.
Rebuilding the checksum cache can take quite some time. If running the egencache command hangs for a while just wait it out.
See also
- Elogv — a curses-based tool that parses the contents of elogs created by Portage.
- Useful Portage tools — provides a list of Gentoo-specific system management tools, notably for Portage, available in the ebuild repository.