I notice that my eix DBs have been gradually becoming out-of-sync with my ebuild repos. eix-update shows no errors but always says there are the same number of packages.
Strace shows about 10k open errors: ~ # strace -fcw eix-update >/dev/null % time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 34.11 0.492491 6 87192 read 28.34 0.409197 6 63923 10066 open 20.40 0.294469 5 53857 close 6.03 0.087096 9 9972 getdents 3.84 0.055440 5 10570 fstat [...] However most of these are only metadata/md5-cache files under my layman directory, not the main portage tree. I have no idea what those files are for anyway since there's no documentation. It does seem to be doing something with the eix db itself as mtime is changed - just no changes are reflected when querying it, even the main repo. e.g.: ~ # eix -e portage [?] sys-apps/portage Available versions: 2.2.26 2.2.28 2.3.0{tbz2} (~)2.3.1 (~)2.3.2 2.3.3 **9999 {build doc epydoc +ipc (+)native-extensions selinux xattr LINGUAS="ru" PYTHON_TARGETS="pypy python2_7 python3_4 python3_5 python3_6"} Installed versions: 2.3.5(02:47:21 AM 03/18/2017)(doc ipc native-extensions xattr -build -epydoc -selinux LINGUAS="-ru" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_4 python3_5 python3_6 -pypy") Homepage: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Portage Description: Portage is the package management and distribution system for Gentoo