Gentoo masked packages

Masked packages in Portage - Gentoo Linux

Masked packages

There are several reasons for the Gentoo developers to place a mask on a package.
For instance:

• A package may not be entirely tested on your arch.
• It may not be stable on your arch.
• It might be buggy together with other packages on your system.

If you want to override the masking of the package, you just have to add a line to a specific file. There are two levels of masked packages.

• Packages masked with a certain keyword
• and/or hard masked packages

For a regular x86-system, the keyword would be x86. To unmask all packages with a certain keyword edit /etc/make.conf. The example will unmask all masked x86 packages.

File: /etc/make.conf

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"

The easiest way to unmask a specific package, is to add a line using a method like this:

Code:

(1) echo "app-admin/sudo" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords (2) echo "app-admin/sudo" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask

Only use the second method if the package is hard-masked.

You can use specific operands, to control certain versions of a package to be masked/unmasked:

• = - Use this when specifying a specific package to unmask, like x11-terms/rxvt/rxvt-2.7.10-r2

File: /etc/package.unmask

# Unmask only rxvt-2.7.10-r2 but not older or newer versions =x11-terms/rxvt/rxvt-2.7.10-r2 # Unmask rxvt-2.7.10-r2 and any newer versions >=x11-terms/rxvt/rxvt-2.7.10-r2 # Unmask up to rxvt-2.7.10-r2 but not any newer versions <=x11-terms/rxvt/rxvt-2.7.10-r2

Masking a package

If you have a package that is unstable on your system you can mask that package by adding it to /etc/portage/package.mask

The work on this article will continue. /Chris