Hi. I have just done a fresh install of gentoo from 2007 live cd which went all ok.

Everything seemed to be working fine until I tried to bring the system up to date.

I went to a terminal and

emerge --sync

then emerge -avuND world.

After a 800M plus download (444 packages to update!) I rebooted to find gnome will no longer start.

From the console, I can manually startx, but just get a very blank X windows session with no windows manager working.

If I try to emerge -av gnome it lists all packages to update

but only gets about halfway through the 1st package then

If I try --skipfirst similar things happen, it will get so far then fail.

Can anyone help me as I am still new to gentoo and don't want to give up on it.

Compliments! So, you survived your first install
That's weird - gnome should be one of the apps that are really well tested - I don't think the problem has something to do with Gentoo itself, but you never know... .

So, the first thing you should do is to doublecheck again that everything is really up-to-date with "emerge --update --deep --newuse world".

If that says you everything should be ok, run "revdep-rebuild" (perhaps in order to get that utility you'll first have to "emerge gentoolkit") which will go through all your libraries and check if some of them have to be recompiled because of some dependencies you just upgraded and changed their behaviours. It will perform the check and eventually emerge automatically anything that is out-of-sync. (the check might take a few minutes - have a beer - and the emerge, if it happens, will take as long as emerging the stuff normally).

At this point, if the two previous actions did something, try again to re-emerge gnome. Once (if) it's done check in "/etc/rc.conf" (I think it is there - a file "rc.conf" somewhere under "/etc") which shows at its end the variable, I think, XSESSION - something like that. Change the assignment to that variable to your window manager - in my case it's "XSESSION=enlightenment" because I use Enlightenment instead of Gnome or KDE.

If re-emerging gnome still fails check first the architecture and the CFLAGS you have set in "/etc/make.conf". Are you really sure they're the correct ones for your CPU? Even the optimization option "-O3" instead of "-O2" can generate weird behaviours when some code is compiled. Eventually have a look in Google for "gentoo safe cflags" http.//gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags and compare them with what you have and change them accordingly, at least for the first install - you can do experiments once your system has been set up and is stable.

If all this fails, when you emerge gnome, search for the really first error message you see. What you pasted into this thread are only the boring messages that show up at the very end when the emerge fails, and you probably cannot see the previous lines because you don't have a graphical WM where you can scroll up in the shell, right? But do a "less /var/tmp/portage/gnome-base/gnome-panel-2.20.3/temp/build.log'" (as shown in what you pasted into this thread) to see the whole log, go to the bottom and slowly go back and search the very first line that says that something has gone bad - that line will show the real error you have - and at this point insert it into google and you should find a post with the reason/solution - this way it always worked for me.

I'd also first do emerge -avuND world again to see if really everything was compiled.
But since you say you did this and then rebooted - I wonder if you paid attention to the messages reminding you to update your configuration-files.
run:
etc-update
(a more convenient alternative is dispatch-conf)
It is very likely that after updating that many packages some configuration-files changed and are no longer up to date or in the wrong place.

If you did not pay attention to that then you are lucky that you can even still boot
Running revdep-rebuild -p would be the next thing to do

One more thing: here I always took note of some stuff I had to search - it's just a repository of keywords and small solutions, e.g. like the sandbox - might be handy as well to you.

And: "emerge eix" to do fast searches in the package repository (emerge -s might take ages depending on your HDD & CPU)
And: use genlop to time your compilations - that way when you do updates / recompilations you get a feeling of how long it might take. E.g. "genlop -t gnome" show all runtimes of the previous gnome-compilations. "genlop -c" shows the projected end of whatever you are currently compiling (you must of course have compiled it at least once before).

Oh, yes, jomen is fully right - I forgot that one.
And the rule of thumb for me is: I watch closely the differencies that etc-update shows me for the files that I know I modified, and I let the system update all the rest with the newest versions.

DannyK, you need to paste more of the error. The part you pasted is unfortunately the part with almost no information. The actual error should be in the 5-10 lines above that.

Thanks for all the replys.

I had done a etc-update and I think revdep-rebuild (but I am not sure about the -p).

after 444 packages to update, there is quite a bit of reading to do at the end!!!

the error (just above my last message I posted)

I tried emerge libxm12 (which reinstalled ok)

Now after emerge -av gnome, seems to be going great guns!!!
still building at the moment (3 of 20)

Its getting a lot further than before anyways. Will let you know how it goes.

BTW. I have been building this via screen (after gnome stopped working) so I can check up on things during the day at work and so I can log in from a computer with a graphical environment to read alot more of the screen.

Yes - there is quite a lot of reading to do - that is one reason I recommended dispatch-conf.
You can configure the behaviour - but by default it will auto-merge config-files with only trivial changes or where the difference is only in the header of the config-file - this results in much less files you have to go through manually.

revdep-rebuild -p
The -p switch is simar to the -a switch - it means: pretend.
(-a means: ask for confirmation)
The message after running that command tells you that you can now remove "-p" from the command and run it again when you are willing to do what it tells you it would have done.

Waht's "screen"? Is it a remote desktop utility? Never heard about it until now ... .

Like a terminal - you start your application (text-based) in it but you can detach from it - and reattach from anywhere else, as long as the machine (and screen) is running.

All up and running again.

Updated gnome looks great and runs fast on this average machine.

proc p4 1.7Ghz
Mem 375.5M

Thanks again for the quick responses.

Thanks jomen
You're welcome, dannyk1.