On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Maxim Wexler <maxim.wex...@gmail.com> wrote: > I like gentoo; there's a steep learning curve but after you pass that > it just clicks. As difficult as it ever became there was always an > answer to be found, on a blog, irc, documentaiton... > > But I might have to give up on gentoo if I can't find a way to fix > this latest difficulty. I live in the hinterland where there is no > broadband. I have to make do with a dialup modem over ~10mi of copper > wire. Now I find I can no longer dialup the internet using ppp command > #pon <isp>. The modem lights come on and the log says the DNS have > been all been assigned. status=0x0. But I can't ping out. 'Host > unreachable'. > > As slow as my connection is, I've always been able to sync portage and > use bash to write a link file which I can download at the free wifi in > town. Now I can't even do that. > > I suspect this has something to do with the openrc which seems to be > steadily "improving".. There are no error msgs other than the ping > error above. I'm sure this is gentoo specific because it doesn't > affect the Ubuntu side of my pc(yet ;().where I'm typing this. In > ubuntu I have to rmmod my wifi and ethn drivers or the same thing > happens: modem lights up, log says everything fine, but no internet. > Once every other bit of net hardware comes down, the web is reachable. > This USED to be the case for gentoo as well, but now, even that > doesn't help. > > The landline gets no respect. Now gmail is making angry noises cause I > won't give them my mobile number. But I don't have one. There isn't > even coverage out here. > > Broadband and dialup used to get along but those days seem to be gone. > > Hope somebody can see a way out.
This is far from ideal, but I have been able to work around situations like this. You need to rsync the portage tree by hand to a USB drive in the wi-fi cafe, and then rsync again by hand in your house. Then, you run: emerge --metadata Then, you get the list of URLs you need to download to emerge world: emerge -uDNvfp world > urls You need to edit the file to remove duplicates and redundant mirrors (I can usually do it inside emacs in two minutes or less), and then check what files you already have in /usr/portage/distfiles (with a tiny bash script). You get the list of files you need, and only select those from the list of URLs, and then you have the files you need to download. You go back to the wi-fi cafe, download the files on a USB drive, and return home to put them on /usr/portage/distfiles. And then you can upgrade world. It sucks, since you need to drive twice to the wi-fi cafe, but it works. Hope it helps. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
