After updating audio/pulseaudio to 0.9.17, the volume control on the panel was missing. So, trying from a console: $ gnome-volume-control /libexec/ld-elf.so. 1: Shared object "libpulsecommon-0.9.15.so" not found, required by "gnome- volume-control" which was obviously solved by a portupgrade -f audio/gnome- media.