If you for whatever reason managed to break Entropy (equo) and aren’t able to update / upgrade / install any program using Entropy, you are screwed most likely because you could not update Entropy or reinstall equo to fix it.
It is very unlikely that you get into a situation like this but I’ve seen the most weird problems people get into and it could happen to you too! You install upgrades on your laptop and the battery went down in the middle of process, the cat pushed a button in the powerbox and the lights went out..etc
The alternative to fix Entropy is to install it using Portage. Here are the steps to take:
1. Sync the sabayon overlay:
layman -s sabayon
OR simply add the overlay in case you didn’t have it yet
layman -a sabayon
2. Install Entropy directly from the overlay:
emerge entropy equo --nodeps
3. Inform Entropy about the changes you made:
equo rescue spmsync
5. Reinstall Entropy with Entropy
equo update && equo install entropy equo
LECTORI SALUTEM 
#1 by Enlik on January 20, 2011 - 3:27 pm
Actually it should be –nodeps (two hyphens).
Your editor (or the blog engine) happened to be too eager it seems. 🙂
#2 by joostruis on January 20, 2011 - 8:37 pm
How odd. In the wordpress editor it is correct!
#3 by Fitzcarraldo on January 23, 2011 - 12:02 am
I’ve noticed that, on the SL 5.4 GNOME release at least, the Sabayon overlay is not added by default upon installation these days, so one needs to do first:
layman -a sabayon
as layman -s sabayon will fail with the error message:
Overlay “sabayon” does not exist.
Several users have been reporting that error message when I told them to sync with the Sabayon overlay.
#4 by totedati on June 15, 2011 - 2:28 am
“It is very unlikely that you get into a situation like this”
corrupt entropy databases is not rare eggs in real laptops upgrades scenarios when you do not have access to permanent power sources …
you batteries run out before entropy manage to complete his work and bang! corrupt database … you run with batteries pulled out, using AC source, one wrong move, poor laptop yanked out of power source and bang! corrupt database
can happen!
#5 by Dreetje on June 25, 2011 - 5:17 pm
It can happen if the maker happens to break something and accidentally pushed it upstream…
And @Fitzcarraldo, somewhere in Sabayon 5 the overlay has been removed for some reason…