I had the same problem a while back "the cdrom drive wouldn't open up and stay open" It was driving me crazy as I attempted to put a disk in the drive before it closed. It was too fast for me, it would grab my hand before I could get the disk inserted :) Once I removed ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support from the kernel and only used Serial ATA and Parallel ATA drivers It worked fine again.

< > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support (DEPRECATED) --->
<*> Serial ATA and Parallel ATA drivers --->

May be worth a try ...

I use Gnome and the fonts were awlful, I got them looking good now by editing two files;
~/.Xdefaults

Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.rgba:       rgb

      "webprefs": {
         "default_fixed_font_size": 18,
         "default_font_size": 18,
         "fixed_font_family": "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono",
         "inspector_settings": "lastActivePanel:string:storage\n",
         "minimum_font_size": 14,
         "minimum_logical_font_size": 14,
         "sansserif_font_family": "Bitstream Vera Sans",
         "serif_font_family": "Bitstream Vera Sans"
      }

I have started doing some x86 arch testing and I am still learning bash so I came up with a little script to automate an update and to disable and then enable the feature "test"

#!/bin/bash
sed -i -e '/^ *$/d' /etc/make.conf
sed -i -e 's:FEATURES="${FEATURES} test": :' /etc/make.conf
emerge --sync && emerge -uD world && revdep-rebuild
echo 'FEATURES="${FEATURES} test"' >> /etc/make.conf

One of the reasons to learn a scriping language like Bash is to automate tasks that you do over and over. I have been x86 arch testing to test packages for stabilization. First check for no open bugs then I have to add the package name to a file package.keywords. I came up with this.

#!/bin/bash
bugz search -s all "$1"
if [ "$1" != "" ]; then
echo "$1 ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords;
printf "\033[32m\n * $1 added to /etc/portage/package.keywords\033[m\n\n";
emerge -1av "$1"
else
    echo "Enter a package!"
fi

The new 10.1 adobe flash is 32 bit only and using nspluginwrapper is a crap shoot, it may work but most times not, so I went back to www-plugins/adobe-flash-10.0.45.2-r1 and it works fine. It was removed because of security concerns. Sometimes I do need flash to play a video, wish it was not true but it is. here is what I did.

echo ">=www-plugins/adobe-flash-10.1.53.64" >> /etc/portage/package.mask
echo "=www-plugins/adobe-flash-10.0.45.2-r1" /
>> /etc/portage/package.unmask
emerge -av www-plugins/adobe-flash

Here are the steps I took to conplete the update of libpng on Gentoo

emerge --sync


Before updating from libpng-1.2 to libpng-1.4 make sure that you have
fetched any other files that need to be updated by running "emerge -euNDf world".

You may need these files in advance because updating libpng is going to
temporarily break many applications linked to it, especially if you're
a Gnome desktop user.


emerge -euNDf world


Lets get started.

emerge --oneshot libpng


* Moving from libpng 1.2.x to 1.4.x will break installed libtool .la
* files.

* Run /usr/sbin/libpng-1.4.x-update.sh at your own risk only if
* revdep-rebuild or lafilefixer fails.

* Don't forget "man emerge" and useful parameters like --skip-first,
* --resume and --keep-going.


cat /usr/sbin/libpng-1.4.x-update.sh
#!/bin/bash

echo "Try revdep-rebuild or lafilefixer first."
echo "This script will rename -lpng12 and libpng12.la to -lpng14 and libpng14.la"
echo "in your system libdir libtool .la files without asking permission."

[[ -d /usr/lib64 ]] && lib_suffix=64

libdir=/usr/lib${lib_suffix}

find ${libdir} -name '*.la' | xargs sed -i -e '/^dependency_libs/s:-lpng12:-lpng14:'
find ${libdir} -name '*.la' | xargs sed -i -e '/^dependency_libs/s:libpng12.la:libpng14.la:'

# WTFPL-2

As I am brave and this was a testing box I ran next;

find /usr/lib64 -name '*.la' | xargs sed -i -e '/^de /s:-lpng12:-lpng14:'


then;

lafilefixer --justfixit

then;

emerge -1 cairo pango gtk+ atk libglade qt-gui

Then for good measure :)

revdep-rebuild

revdep-rebuild rebuild 51 packages

Now you're ready for the "big rebuild". I had to rebuild 70 apps. Those
of you running Gnome, if you're no longer able to use or get to a terminal
in X then just 'Ctrl-Alt-F1' to drop to a shell.

Beware, that you may have to rebuild over 100 apps including Open Office if it
was built with Gnome support.

After this is all done 'Ctrl-Alt-F7' will get you back into your desktop
environment.


emerge -uND world


Then run 'revdep-rebuild' once again. When finished your system should be sane again.

revdep-rebuild

So to make a long story short this may work :)

emerge -uDN world && revdep-rebuild -- --keep-going && lafilefixer --justfixit && revdep-rebuild -- --keep-going


When a package is emerged, the archives are stored into /usr/portage/distfiles (cleaning this directory now and then may free up some disk space) but temporary files in the compilation process are located in /var/tmp/portage. Disk access is somewhat slower than memory access, so if you have spare ram memory, this trick is meant for you. Mounting a memory block on the portage temp area will speed up things for you.
For the purpose add the following line to you /etc/fstab file:


none /var/tmp/portage tmpfs size=2048M,nr_inodes=1M 0 0


In this case it’s a 2GB block, but you can suite to your needs. Please be aware that certain packages require HUGE amounts of memory, such as gcc, OpenOffice, etc…

Editor wrapper script, executes ${EDITOR} on file $1.

#!/bin/sh
# Copyright 2009 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the MIT license
 
# Editor wrapper script, executes ${EDITOR} on file $1.
# We disallow options and multiple file name arguments on purpose, so
# that packages' configure scripts cannot sniff out the type of editor.
 
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "$0: Exactly one argument required" >&2
    exit 1
fi
 
file=$1
if [ "${file#-}" != "${file}" ]; then
    # Argument is supposed to be a file name, not an option
    file=./${file}
fi
 
if [ -z "${EDITOR}" ]; then
    # Try to get EDITOR from system profile
    EDITOR=$(. /etc/profile &>/dev/null; echo "${EDITOR}")
fi
 
if [ -z "${EDITOR}" ]; then
    echo "$0: The EDITOR variable must be set" >&2
    exit 1
fi
 
exec ${EDITOR} "${file}"

eselect editor list
Available targets for the EDITOR variable:
  [1]   /bin/nano
  [2]   /bin/ed
  [3]   /usr/bin/emacs
  [4]   /usr/bin/ex
  [5]   /usr/bin/vi
  [ ]   (free form)
 
eselect editor set 5
 
eselect editor list
Available targets for the EDITOR variable:
  [1]   /bin/nano
  [2]   /bin/ed
  [3]   /usr/bin/emacs
  [4]   /usr/bin/ex
  [5]   /usr/bin/vi *
  [ ]   (free form)

Question
I want to emerge a certain package, let's say x11-base/xorg-drivers,
so I try first "emerge --pretend xorg-drivers" and find it has ~50
various use-flags (some set, some unset). Where can I find their
description? For example "vmmouse", what is this USE flag good for?
Is it something for vmware?

I checked /etc/portage/profiles/use.desc and use.local.desc but
there are not all of them...

Answer
equery u x11-base/xorg-drivers

equery is part of app-portage/gentoolkit in case you don't have it installed. It can do other useful things such as tell you which package installed a file, or show all files installed by a package.

And in the specific case of xorg-drivers those aren't USE flags at all
but driver flags