emerge question

[jukka]

hi,

i'm running gentoo linux on four i386 computers. after merging the latest kernel sources (2.4.19) i noticed (while running `emerge -cp world`) that on one system sources 2.4.19 were marked as protected (as expected), but on another system sources 2.4.18 were protected (and 2.4.19 was not), and on two systems both versions were protected.

what happened? how can i configure which merged ports should be protected, and which should not be?

tia, jukka