Emerge and Firewalls

A typical emerge rsync only works if an intermediate firewall allows the appropriate packets to pass through. Though chances are that you are able to work around that.

• Some firewalls provide an HTTP proxy to access web servers outside of the private network. rsync can use this proxy to connect to the desired rsync server: RSYNC_PROXY="http_proxy:port" emerge rsync

• Unfortunately rsync cannot fulfill its purpose if the private network is protected by a simple packet filter without forwarding (or even masquerading) the following command fetchs the latest snapshot of the portage tree and installs it: emerge-webrsyncWARNING: before installing the snapshot /usr/portage will be cleaned meaning that all binary packages (/usr/portage/packages) and previously downloaded sources (/usr/portage/distfiles) will be deleted. See the little known facts about Gentoo how to store those directories outside of the portage tree.