Emerge basics
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emerge is the package manager for Gentoo. It is responsible for building
packages and ensuring that all dependencies are met. There are a few things
that you'll need to know to use it effectively.

# emerge (options) pkg-name

Available options:
-D 
This tells emerge to check all of the dependencies of the thing to merge as well
as the thing itself

-u
This will upgrade the packagess that are currently being acted upon by emerge

-p
This will calculate dependencies and show what would be installed, but not
install anything

-a
This will calculate dependencies and show what would be installed, then give
you the option to install without having to type the command again

-v
This increases emerge's verbosity and shows the status of the use flags set on
each package (when combined with -p or -a)

--newuse
This will rebuild packages if the use flags have changed since they were
previously merged

-k
-K
This will install from a binary package, the capital version installs only
from binary packages, the lowercase from source if no package exists

-b
-B
This will build a package of the requested applications, the lowercase version
builds the package and installs it

-f
This will make portage only fetch the source and the source of all of the
dependencies, it will not build the package

-S
Search package descriptions for a string

Common usage:

# emerge sync 
This syncs the portage tree on the current machine with the one specified in
/etc/make.conf or the default if not specified

# emerge -Dupv world
This will check all of the installed programs for updates, calling without the
p will result in the system being updated

# emerge -B foo
This will build a binary package of the application foo

# emerge -k foo
This will install the application from source if no package exists

# emerge -Dv --newuse world
This will check every installed package and rebuild it if the useflags have
changed

gentoolkit basics
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gentoolkit is an group of applications useful to maintaining a healthy system

revdep-rebuild
Use this tool to ensure that the system libraries are consistant and no
dependencies are missing.  Run it after upgrading major libraries or if you
are experiencing missing libraries.  You can pass the --library=NAME option to
check the consistancy of a specific library.

glsa-check
Use this tool to check for security updates that are not applied yet.

equery
Use this tool to identify the origin of an installed file, to search for
packages, to see which use flags were used when installing a package and to
find other information about installed packages.

ufed
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ufed is used to edit the use flags on the current machine.  You will not need
to use this under normal circumstances, only when installing a new package.

rc-update
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Use this tool to modify the applications that start on startup.

# rc-update add <foo> default
Starts foo at runlevel default

# rc-update show
Shows all available applications that can be started by init and which (if
any) runlevel they're started at

dispatch-conf
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This tool updates your configuration files and backs up the existing ones to
ensure there is a safe fallback.  After installing a package, emerge will let
you know if there are configuration files that need to be updated.  Note that
this is only used for configuration files that are changed by portage.  If
you've manually created a configuration file, you must maintain it seperately
from portage.