Title: Portage rsync tree verification unstable
Author: Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org>
Posted: 2018-03-13
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Installed: sys-apps/portage

Portage rsync tree verification is being temporarily turned off by
default, starting with sys-apps/portage-2.3.24. This permits
stabilization of sys-apps/portage-2.3.24 while still working on bugs
relating to tree verification [1]: deadlocks [2] & key fetching [3].

If users wish to enable the 'rsync-verify' USE flag for sys-apps/portage,
they need to follow these steps:

1) In order to unmask the 'rsync-verify' USE flag, create a file named
/etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask containing a line like the
following:

    sys-apps/portage -rsync-verify

2) Once the 'rsync-verify' USE flag has been unmasked as described
in step 1, it can be enabled with a line like the following in
/etc/portage/package.use:

    sys-apps/portage rsync-verify

3) After the configuration changes in steps 1 and 2 have been made, run
the following command:

    emerge --oneshot --newuse '>=sys-apps/portage-2.3.24'

After all above steps are successfully completed, a line like the
following should appear in the emerge --info output for the gentoo
repository:

    sync-rsync-verify-metamanifest: yes

If you wish to disable it for some reason, you can set
'sync-rsync-verify-metamanifest = no' in your repos.conf.

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/650144 sys-apps/portage: [TRACKER] issues
    related to 'rsync-verify' USE flag
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/647964 app-portage/gemato-11.2: deadlock?
[3] https://bugs.gentoo.org/649276 sys-apps/portage: gpg key refresh
    needs exponential backoff with jitter