Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:57:38 Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Does porthole count? I use it sometimes and it is well all right. I miss etcat myself. Just as I was starting to get used to it, it disappeared. You're just stirring the pot Dale :-) I know for a fact that you can hold your own with emerge and eix :-) -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 7:07, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. That's definitely good. It never worked and newbies came to Gentoo thinking that it as some kind of uberfaster ubuntu thing that could be installed by just clicking next. Than I'll rephrase my statement: Gentoo would need a non-bugged GUI installer ;) Then they ran away yelling how bad this gentoo crap is that doesn't work at all unless you do a lot of black magic on the command line! Because I want full control over my system, but only clicking next. The OS should read my mind! I don't think anyone should care about that. Installation and maintenance are two different things. A good GUI installer would pretty much allow you to do the same things as the CLI installer. It's just a different interface. And besides, installation is much more standardized than actual maintenance. There's no reason why a GUI installer can't do the same things as the CLI one. You'll just have GUI widgets instead of text-mode characters, maybe with a lot of automation and safe defaults thrown in. Personally, even though I'm an old fart (I installed Slackware when it first came out, used it for years), I prefer GUI installers. Installation is *boring*. I need to do the steps manually even though they're pretty much the same every time you install. I'm OK with CLI maintenance. But for the installer I really prefer GUI. If we clear that from the beginning so everyone knows what to expect from gentoo AND WHAT GENTOO EXPECTS FROM YOU then that problem is gone. You don't need to make such a statement through the installer. There are other, more suitable places for this. Like in the docs, website, or a notice in the... installer :) Also, Gentoo isn't really black magic. There's no good reason why emerge for example isn't GUI based. Or revdep-rebuild. Or layman. Or... I hope you get the point ;) Yes, those things need a lot of work and there are no people willing to do the task. But I'm just trying to make a point here: the way you do maintenance in Gentoo isn't based on the traditional Unix tools. That means, you could have GUIs for all of them. But I'm drifting. The installer is pretty much separated from all this. After all, all it needs to do is set up stage3 and tweak the settings. Some would call this a nazi attidute of mine, I would say that you can't drive an f-17 unless you are willing to prepare yourself to do so before. It's called realism. You need to learn before you can do. Even a child can understand that. Yes, but learning is made a lot easier through a GUI interface. Not all GUIs are created equal. You can have a simple click next wizard (not suitable for learning) or a collection of GUI tools that do different things but offer many options without actually obfuscating what's going on. A GUI for emerge for example, could simply have a line at the bottom where the actual command is shown that would be executed with the chosen option. The user knows here that he can simply type that command himself. That's different to tools like openSUSE's YaST for example, where you have no clue how it actually does what it does. GUIs for the simple things is good. Maybe CLI for the hairy stuff. Someone would argue that's too hard to start, but that's why we have excellent docs, mailing lists, forums and irc, with a very high traffic and lots of friendly people giving away their time for free to help you. So, whomever can't find a way is either too lazy or too shy to talk to the people around. Gentoo was never meant to win a popularity price. I prefer to stay without nothing at all that to have the lot of problems that the installer has been creating during 3 years of existence. It harmed the gentoo popularity (if you like that argument) much more than the lack of a installer. But popularity is good for the project. It ensures that it stays healthy, supported and can draw in new devs. If popularity gows down, devs leave, more bugs show up that don't get fixed, etc. Besides that, there's no easy way that you will understand Gentoo if you are not going to read the handbook. And even then, it takes time to become familiar with the way that USE flags truly work (and I mean to understand it, and not just do -qt -kde +gnome +gtk blindly that most users do (or the other way around) without even knowing what's behind the scene and how USE flags and ebuilds relate to each other. Now this is actually a pro-GUI argument. Why? In a GUI interface, you can
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. We are all comfortable with this because the people who are not comfortable left. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:57:38 Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Does porthole count? I use it sometimes and it is well all right. I miss etcat myself. Just as I was starting to get used to it, it disappeared. You're just stirring the pot Dale :-) I know for a fact that you can hold your own with emerge and eix :-) I do OK with emerge. Eix, I know two uses. eix-sync and eix package-name. I do know a few equery commands tho. I suspect it will disappear soon since I am learning a little bit about it. lol Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Sebastián Magrí wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. gentoo had its highest popularity when there were no gui installer (and no stable tree). This kept the stupid ' I don't want to read docs' crowd away. That's a contradicting statement. How was the popularity at highest if it kept a crowd away?
Re: [gentoo-user] syslog-ng +bash history
2009/2/4 Yannick Mortier mvmort...@googlemail.com
2009/2/4 Marcin Niskiewicz mniskiew...@gmail.com:
Hello Marcin!
I imply that you already have done some modifications to your
syslog-ng.conf as logging everything the user type on the console is
not in the standard file that comes with gentoo.
Basically syslog-ng has got sources and destinations. So you have to
take a look at your syslog-ng.conf and find out the name of the
sources and the name of the destination of the history.log file.
Then you can simply add the following line (replace the variables
accordingly)
log { source([source that was previously used for debug]);
source([source that was previously used for syslog]); source([source
that was previously used for messages]); destination([destination of
history.log]) };
If all the sources give you the same messages or they are one and the
same source just insert only this one. If your history.log file was
not defined by now you can simply add it as a destination with
destination [name] { file([path-to-history.log]/history.log);}
Also if there are other log lines that contain the sources and the
destinations that you mentioned you have to remove them completely if
they only contain this one source or just remove the source that
delivers the history.
Then syslog-ng should only log into history.log
Greetings
--
Currently developing a browsergame...
http://www.p-game.de
Trade - Expand - Fight
Follow me at twitter!
http://twitter.com/moortier
As I can see I wrote my post unclearly ;)
I meant that in standard configuration (without any changes) everything
typed in console is written to those 3 files (debug , syslog, messages)
And I would like syslog not to log history in those 3 files.
So I made filter to route it to history.log
It works fine (it writes history to history.log) but still it writes it to
those 3 files (debug , syslog, messages) as well ...
so now everything I type is written to 4 files (debug , syslog, messages and
history.log) and I'd like it to be written only to 1 file.
I hope it's clear now ;)
regards
My STANDARD configuration (with my modifiication to route history to
history.log) looks like this:
# Copyright 2005 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header:
/var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/app-admin/syslog-ng/files/syslog-ng.conf.gentoo.hardened,v
1.5 2007/10/30 17:16:15 solar Exp $
#
# Syslog-ng configuration file, compatible with default hardened
installations.
#
options {
chain_hostnames(off);
sync(0);
stats(43200);
};
source src { unix-stream(/dev/log); internal(); };
source kernsrc { file(/proc/kmsg); };
destination authlog { file(/var/log/auth.log); };
destination syslog { file(/var/log/syslog); };
destination cron { file(/var/log/cron.log); };
destination daemon { file(/var/log/daemon.log); };
destination kern { file(/var/log/kern.log); file(/dev/tty12); };
destination lpr { file(/var/log/lpr.log); };
destination user { file(/var/log/user.log); };
destination uucp { file(/var/log/uucp.log); };
destination mail { file(/var/log/mail/mail.log); };
destination avc { file(/var/log/avc.log); };
destination audit { file(/var/log/audit.log); };
destination pax { file(/var/log/pax.log); };
destination grsec { file(/var/log/grsec.log); };
destination historia { file(/var/log/history.log); };
destination mailinfo { file(/var/log/mail/mail.info); };
destination mailwarn { file(/var/log/mail/mail.warn); };
destination mailerr { file(/var/log/mail/mail.err); };
destination newscrit { file(/var/log/news/news.crit); };
destination newserr { file(/var/log/news/news.err); };
destination newsnotice { file(/var/log/news/news.notice); };
destination debug { file(/var/log/debug); };
destination messages { file(/var/log/messages); };
destination console { usertty(root); };
destination console_all { file(/dev/tty12); };
destination xconsole { pipe(/dev/xconsole); };
filter f_auth { facility(auth); };
filter f_authpriv { facility(auth, authpriv); };
filter f_syslog { not facility(authpriv, mail); };
filter f_cron { facility(cron); };
filter f_daemon { facility(daemon); };
filter f_kern { facility(kern); };
filter f_lpr { facility(lpr); };
filter f_mail { facility(mail); };
filter f_user { facility(user); };
filter f_uucp { facility(uucp); };
filter f_debug { not facility(auth, authpriv, news, mail); };
filter f_messages { level(info..warn)
and not facility(auth, authpriv, mail, news); };
filter f_emergency { level(emerg); };
filter f_info { level(info); };
filter f_notice { level(notice); };
filter f_warn { level(warn); };
filter f_crit { level(crit); };
filter f_err { level(err); };
filter f_avc { match(.*avc: .*); };
filter f_audit { match(^audit.*) and not match(.*avc: .*); };
filter f_pax { match(^PAX:.*); };
filter f_grsec { match(^grsec:.*); };
filter f_history { match(.*HISTORY*); };
log { source(src); filter(f_authpriv); destination(authlog); };
log {
[gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote: Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in xorg.conf at all these days? Fonts are complicated :-) IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf you don't need any fonts in xorg.conf. That is true, but if I remove the section, fonts in Firefox seem to change. So it does something. It still works, but different. No idea how/why.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it
On 08:40 Thu 05 Feb , Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 00:05:55 Paul Hartman wrote: Almost the same as mine, except I still have lots of font stuff in my xorg.conf -- do those go somewhere else? or are they unneeded in xorg.conf at all these days? Fonts are complicated :-) IIRC, the older bit mapped X fonts go in xorg.conf you don't need any fonts in xorg.conf. I use the terminus font for my terminal-emulator and it doesnt work if that font-path is missing from xorg.conf. Urxvt complains of unable to load font. Also i supply the font name as URxvt*font: -xos4-terminus-*-*-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-*-u in my .Xdefaults. -- Thanks Regards, Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Where has vmware-config.pl gone?
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 08:21:35 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: look at the output of equery files vmware-workstation if vmware-config.pl isn't there, and it should be you have a buggy ebuild vmware-config is no more with 6.5. I've not had to reconfigure the network, but rebuilding the modules after a kernel change is done by emerging vmware-modules. vmware-netcfg may do what you need, it looks as though they make have split it into separate tools. -- Neil Bothwick Top Oxymorons Number 22: Childproof signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 3:29 AM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Sebastián Magrí wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. gentoo had its highest popularity when there were no gui installer (and no stable tree). This kept the stupid ' I don't want to read docs' crowd away. That's a contradicting statement. How was the popularity at highest if it kept a crowd away? Because once those who know what they were doing have to resort to Learn to read, Read The Friendly Manual, and Ever heard of Google? so often, after likely having answered the same questions 10+times each, they all get a bad reputation, hurting the real popularity of the system. Also, you can't count popularity of something like Gentoo from the number that start to try it and give up half way through the install... but rather by those who're still using it some meaningful amount of time. All... *entirely* wild guesses, though. -- Poison [BLX] Joshua M. Murphy
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 9:11, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 7:07, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Sebastián Magrà wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. That's definitely good. It never worked and newbies came to Gentoo thinking that it as some kind of uberfaster ubuntu thing that could be installed by just clicking next. Than I'll rephrase my statement: Gentoo would need a non-bugged GUI installer ;) I wouldn't have anything against that. But after seeing one failure after another I think that lots of users are scared to see yet-another-one that will only make our lives more difficult. I wouldn't mind about it if it's developed as experimental stuff and NEVER ever again included as a valid method of installation in the handbook unless A) it's as rock solid as the command line B) the user ends the procedure knowing the same things about gentoo that you would know if you installed by hand (i am particularly concerned about this one, and I simply can't see how a GUI would accomplish this one at all) Then they ran away yelling how bad this gentoo crap is that doesn't work at all unless you do a lot of black magic on the command line! Because I want full control over my system, but only clicking next. The OS should read my mind! I don't think anyone should care about that. Well, I only said that because you talked about popularity. Otherwise, we agree: I don't care at all. You made some good arguments about GUIs, and I understand them. We could have a simplified and standardized installer that work with a standard config. However I don't wanna live yet another nightmare. Also, Gentoo isn't really black magic. There's no good reason why emerge for example isn't GUI based. Or revdep-rebuild. Or layman. Or... I hope you get the point ;) Yes, those things need a lot of work and there are no people willing to do the task. But I'm just trying to make a point here: the way you do maintenance in Gentoo isn't based on the traditional Unix tools. That means, you could have GUIs for all of them. But I'm drifting. The installer is pretty much separated from all this. After all, all it needs to do is set up stage3 and tweak the settings. Well. I suppose it's about tastes. But the shell is where emerge and ebuilds belong for me. After all, the ebuilds are nothing but bash scripts. You could do frontends to it, but it would still be a lot of python and bash code behind that. With these tools it happens the same that with the installer. At one point, tools like these appear, they are developed for some time and work mostly ok but not perfect, then they get stagnated, they break more and more and more with the time, until it comes the day they are unusable and the project dies. I guess that -again- because there's zero interest. When you need to compile something: A) it can't get any simpler, nicer nor faster than doing emerge something, really B) the last thing you needs is a heavy interface taking away your ram and cpu, emerge itself is heavy enough as it is, there's no need to add weight to the thing C) you won't like when X is closed in the middle of emerge that's why you run emerges on an vt or a screen session, in text mode And probably many more. I would love, though, to see a curses frontend where I can dive into my portage dirs in an mc-ish fashion, which is where portage frontens make any sense for me: when you just want to take a look around and see what's in there :) -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:13:54 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. There is an automated installer in development. It is script based, so you avoid the boredom factor without shielding people from the fact that they will need to use the terminal and text files once it is installed. http://agaffney.org/quickstart.php -- Neil Bothwick A phaser is the universal communicator. þ Worf signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] AWstats problems
Hi I have in the last few days tried to get awstats up and running on my gentoo box but without any luck. I have emerge awstats without any problems and added this to my apache configuration (/etc/apache/httpd.conf) #AWStats configuration Alias /awstatsclasses /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/htdocs/ classes/ Alias /awstatscss /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/htdocs/css/ Alias /awstatsicons /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/htdocs/icon/ ScriptAlias /awstats/ /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/htdocs/cgi- bin/ Directory /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/hostroot/cgi-bin/ Options +ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all /Directory Directory /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r1/htdocs/s Order allow,deny Allow from all /Directory Include /etc/apache2/awstats.conf I have added this to my vhost file CustomLog /var/log/apache2/www.testsite.test/access_log combined and restarted my apache server. I can run /usr/share/webapps/awstats/6.9-r/hostroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=www.testsite.test -update and it seem to perform the operation fine... The problem occurs when I try to view awstats in my browser: http://www.testsite.test/awstats/awstats.pl?config=www.testsite.test Then I get a http 403 error: Forbidden You don't have permission to access /awstats/awstats.pl on this server. I have tried a lot of guides and howto after browsing google, but non of them seems to do the final trick of letting me access awstats Do anyone know of a solution to the 403 error or a reference to a up- to-date guide on how to setup awstats on gentoo. Regards Joe
Re: [gentoo-user] When did bzImage move?
But that would only allow you to have two kernels laying around. Right now I have these: r...@smoker / # ls /boot/bzImage-2* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2355440 Jan 31 18:52 /boot/bzImage-2-28-r8-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2460088 Jan 2 20:13 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-7 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2288336 Dec 30 07:49 /boot/bzImage-2.6.27-r7-1 In the general config you can add a suffix. I use a two-letter extension that goes up with each installed version on the specific machine (never reached past 26**2 but I could go to three letters). That leaves you with bzImage-2.6.27.aa, bzImage-2.6.27.ab, bzImage-2.6.28.ac, etc. At that point you can either put them all into your menu.lst or just hack the command line in grub to get an older kernel. Q: How often do you really need to go back more than one kernel? If you have one especially clean, stable kernel for disaster recovery just name it stable and have two hard-wired entries for the vmlinuz and 'stable'. -- Steven Lembark85-09 90th St. Workhorse Computing Woodhaven, NY, 11421 lemb...@wrkhors.com +1 888 359 3508
Re: [gentoo-user] When did bzImage move?
Steven Lembark wrote: But that would only allow you to have two kernels laying around. Right now I have these: r...@smoker / # ls /boot/bzImage-2* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2355440 Jan 31 18:52 /boot/bzImage-2-28-r8-1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2460088 Jan 2 20:13 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-7 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2288336 Dec 30 07:49 /boot/bzImage-2.6.27-r7-1 In the general config you can add a suffix. I use a two-letter extension that goes up with each installed version on the specific machine (never reached past 26**2 but I could go to three letters). That leaves you with bzImage-2.6.27.aa, bzImage-2.6.27.ab, bzImage-2.6.28.ac, etc. At that point you can either put them all into your menu.lst or just hack the command line in grub to get an older kernel. Q: How often do you really need to go back more than one kernel? If you have one especially clean, stable kernel for disaster recovery just name it stable and have two hard-wired entries for the vmlinuz and 'stable'. Oh but you should see me when I am testing stuff. I can have 15 kernels in there. I have gotten better lately tho. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
A downside is that you'll need fast machines to comfortably build packages. I wouldn't use it on my Pentium 3 800Mhz for example. That would take ages to compile system/world with recent GCC versions. I guess GCC was much faster in the 2.x versions back then? How painful is it, really, to run the job when you are asleep or away from the machine? Cron the update or use at to get the changes you want when you are away from the console. -- Steven Lembark85-09 90th St. Workhorse Computing Woodhaven, NY, 11421 lemb...@wrkhors.com +1 888 359 3508
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Steven Lembark wrote: A downside is that you'll need fast machines to comfortably build packages. I wouldn't use it on my Pentium 3 800Mhz for example. That would take ages to compile system/world with recent GCC versions. I guess GCC was much faster in the 2.x versions back then? How painful is it, really, to run the job when you are asleep or away from the machine? Cron the update or use at to get the changes you want when you are away from the console. Well, to answer you question, it is very painful.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Steven Lembark lemb...@wrkhors.com wrote: How painful is it, really, to run the job when you are asleep or away from the machine? Cron the update or use at to get the changes you want when you are away from the console. Not painful, uncomfortable: When I get back home my room will be hot and the current build would probably fail again on kde-base/systemsettings :) Regards Dirk
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Sebastián Magrí wrote: The installation experience with the traditional method must be mandatory... That's why I think we are better now that GLI is deprecated... That's not good. It hurts Gentoo's popularity if it's not easy to install. But since there are not enough devs left for the GUI installer, not much that can be done. Gentoo isn't unsuitable for a GUI installer. It's stage 3, after all. gentoo had its highest popularity when there were no gui installer (and no stable tree). This kept the stupid ' I don't want to read docs' crowd away. That's a contradicting statement. How was the popularity at highest if it kept a crowd away? because it kept the 'i am too cool to read the docs' idiots away. Being forced to read the documentation is a good thing - and it did not hurt gentoo's popularity. Only after it started to catering to idiots and more and more of loud mouthed 'I am the centre of the universe, I don't need to read docs, use google or bugzilla. I demand an answer and help NOW' assholes came on board, the popularity went down.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
my style has always been to get the minimal installer. chroot, install kernel to my specs then boot to hard drive, then start building it to how i want it built. the handbook is pretty specific and straight-forward. one just has to follow it. i've done N installs over the years and i still turn to the handbook, just to keep track. anyway. if people find the installer difficult maybe gentoo isn't for them. On 02 5, 09, at 7:01 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). yes, installation is VERY boring. that's part of the compromise, i guess. Cocoy www.twitter.com/cocoy People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware -- Alan Kay
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. Great thinking. Fortunately, there are people (like the Ubuntu folks) who don't think that way and are trying to make Linux more popular to people who need a computer to do tasks that are not related to the computer itself.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it parroted by so many people? snip Depending on what you do with the system it still can be quite true. For example, there is a known bug in the RH distro of Perl that leaves it running 10x slower than a locally compiled version. There are also quite a few packages that still come compiled with '-g', or depend on 15 shared object lib's that you don't use but now cannot turn off. If you are trying to squeeze performance out of a box then any kind of cruft will slow you down. You can also look at library-dependency hell as a form of performance hit: if you spend X hours trying to work around the library glitches it's that much dead time on the box you aren't using. -- Steven Lembark85-09 90th St. Workhorse Computing Woodhaven, NY, 11421 lemb...@wrkhors.com +1 888 359 3508
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. no, I didn't call her 'idiot'. I am just stating that ubuntu tries to cater for idiots. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 1:36 PM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. Great thinking. Fortunately, there are people (like the Ubuntu folks) who don't think that way and are trying to make Linux more popular to people who need a computer to do tasks that are not related to the computer itself. Idiot is such a strong word (I should probably get another name for my dog). The type of user I don't like is the ignorant type. Innocent users are ok, they don't know, but ignorant users choose not to know. And so often these ignorant users demand that they should be able to do anything on a computer. If you wish to benefit from using computers, you should be prepared to spend some time to get to know how the stuff works. The more you want to do, the more you need to know. Not: I want amarok without mysql and xyz plugin running all silky and smooth, but don't give me any command line run-arounds or lots of talk about USE flags. Regards Dirk
Re: [gentoo-user] Removing shared libraries
Thank you Jesus and Paul. I will back up the libraries just in case. On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Jesús Guerrero i92gu...@terra.es wrote: El Mie, 4 de Febrero de 2009, 20:28, Paul Hartman escribió: On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Damian damian.o...@gmail.com wrote: Those shared objects were installed when I manually compiled plasmoids some time ago (using kde 4.1, now I have kde 4.2). So my question is if I can safely remove those files without beaking anything. I think it is safe but I want to be cautious. In any case it's non-vital stuff. So just tar them up and delete. You can put them back if anything related complains. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:36:45 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Great thinking. Fortunately, there are people (like the Ubuntu folks) who don't think that way and are trying to make Linux more popular to people who need a computer to do tasks that are not related to the computer itself. Kudos to Ubuntu for that and for what they have done in popularising Linux. But Gentoo is not Ubuntu, the distros have different aims and a different set of users. Gentoo should no more aim for their target user base than their colour scheme. -- Neil Bothwick Cereal Killer Strikes Again! Cap'n Crunch found dead... signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:22:35 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: How painful is it, really, to run the job when you are asleep or away from the machine? Cron the update or use at to get the changes you want when you are away from the console. Well, to answer you question, it is very painful. man at will ease the pain. Neil - compiling KDE 4.2 on a 900MHz netbook. -- Neil Bothwick We are Microsoft of Borg. Prepare to The application assimilation has caused a General Protection Fault and must exit immediately. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu).
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 02:26:40AM -0600, Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:57:38 Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On Thursday 05 February 2009 09:28:50 Jesús Guerrero wrote: There are enough easy-to-use distros. Let us, masochists, live in peace. We love pain, why do people care so much about what we do with our privacy? :P [it's a joke, in case anyone didn't notice] There have been several attempts to make a decent installer. They all failed miserably and got abandoned. Why? Because to tell the truth, no one has an authentic interest in the matter. The simple answer is most probably the right one. To add to you (excellent) arguments: There is no GUI admin tool for gentoo. You drive this puppy on the command line with tools like emerge, equery, genlop, layman and q. That's how it works, we are all comfortable with this, and this is good. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Does porthole count? I use it sometimes and it is well all right. I miss etcat myself. Just as I was starting to get used to it, it disappeared. You're just stirring the pot Dale :-) I know for a fact that you can hold your own with emerge and eix :-) I do OK with emerge. Eix, I know two uses. eix-sync and eix package-name. I do know a few equery commands tho. I suspect it will disappear soon since I am learning a little bit about it. lol [OT] I give you another nice use for eix: update-eix-remote update [/OT] === TopperH === pgpplx6fJfiAY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/init.d/: ntpd or ntp-client?
On 4 Feb 2009, at 21:29, Drew Tomlinson wrote: ... To avoid running ntp-client and ntpd, look at the -g switch for ntpd. It will make the big jump once and then keep the clock in sync. So NTPD_OPTS=-g in /etc/conf.d/ntpd ? Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. no, I didn't call her 'idiot'. I am just stating that ubuntu tries to cater for idiots. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. And this is why RTFM is a good and common acronym.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Cocoy Dayao wrote: my style has always been to get the minimal installer. chroot, install kernel to my specs then boot to hard drive, then start building it to how i want it built. the handbook is pretty specific and straight-forward. one just has to follow it. i've done N installs over the years and i still turn to the handbook, just to keep track. anyway. if people find the installer difficult maybe gentoo isn't for them. On 02 5, 09, at 7:01 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). yes, installation is VERY boring. that's part of the compromise, i guess. Cocoy www.twitter.com/cocoy People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware -- Alan Kay There are certain situations where the step-by-step installer isn't adequate. For instance, when I was installing gentoo on my G4, it was straight forward and easy, but when I decided to do a minimal install on my Everex laptop, I needed to use initrd, which I previoiusly had no experience with and the Gentoo handbook didn't mention. Granted, it eventually worked, but I would be hesitent to say that there was adequate documentation on it.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Saphirus Sage wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. no, I didn't call her 'idiot'. I am just stating that ubuntu tries to cater for idiots. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. And this is why RTFM is a good and common acronym. exactly. If someone read the docs and still has a question - that is ok. Googled and did not find what he looked for. Happens all the time. Nothing wrong with asking a question. Nobody expects somebody to understand everything or find every answer in the manuals. But somebody who didn't even try to find the answer for himself - that person does not deserve help. Only pity that he is such an idiot.
Re: [gentoo-user] syslog-ng +bash history
On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 09:31:07AM +0100, Penguin Lover Marcin Niskiewicz squawked: It works fine (it writes history to history.log) but still it writes it to those 3 files (debug , syslog, messages) as well ... so now everything I type is written to 4 files (debug , syslog, messages and history.log) and I'd like it to be written only to 1 file. If you have a filter rule that matches for history, why don't you just append and not [insert rule here] to the filter rule for syslog, messages, and debug? W -- This is just for cultural purposes, so don't panic. ~DeathMech, S. Sondhi. P-town PHY 205 Sortir en Pantoufles: up 790 days, 13:07
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On 3 Feb 2009, at 22:39, Grant Edwards wrote: Whenever I see a write-up of Gentoo, it's describe as a system similar to BSD ports where you build packages from source. The main benefit claimed for this approach is that you get better performance because all executables are optimized for exactly the right instruction set. Where did that bit of apocrypha come from, and why is it parroted by so many people? Back in Ye Olde Days, Gentoo was as cool popular as Ubuntu is now. This is before Ubuntu existed, but when the perception of Debian as boring (because package versions in stable were so old) was already fairly established. If I look at, say, Slashdot now, I see articles like Setting Up Ubuntu On a PS3 For Emulation, Jumping To Ubuntu At Work For Non- Linux Geeks and The Secret Lives of Ubuntu Users but back before 2004.0, when the Gentoo installer disks and profiles were called 1.2 1.4, all the generic using Linux stories which happened to mention a distro by name, mentioned Gentoo. Honestly, Gentoo was in the news _all the time_ - that's how I learned about it when I was looking for a new distro (when Mandrake went bust for the second or third time). The most popular distro will naturally have the largest number of over- enthusiastic recent Linux converts, and also the largest number of idiots. Also your mom. :P So as you now regularly see blog posts or forum comments or social news stories about how I love Ubuntu because I did this with it or Ubuntu's loads better than Windows because - posts which completely ignore that the same thing could done just the same with ANY Linux distro - we used to see those comments made about Gentoo. Just as now (a minority of) people will make idiotic claims about Ubuntu, back in the day the most common over-enthusiastic claim about Gentoo was it's so |33t - it makes your whole computer faster. A couple of posts in this thread have given genuine anecdotes which support this, but when the claimant was blatantly an idiot (which inevitably was sometimes the case) then one can see how the claim might not seem credible to an outside independent observer. This is the background which the funroll-loops website satirised - optimised executables sounds just like it came from that site, and EXACTLY the sort of phrase that would've been used by a Gentoo fanboy at the time. Performance was another favourite word, always used blindly or with claims that the GUI felt snappier on Gentoo, rather than any actual benchmarks. I'm sure there was at least one amateur performance benchmarking article that came out at that time - showing Gentoo to be the fastest, of course - and which was immediately discredited because the competing distros used safer, more conservative defaults (for filesystem settings or something). To be honest, I am surprised this notion of optimised executables has stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old joke to many of us who were around in 2004. Stroller.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 2009-02-05, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:13:54 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. There is an automated installer in development. It is script based, so you avoid the boredom factor without shielding people from the fact that they will need to use the terminal and text files once it is installed. http://agaffney.org/quickstart.php That sounds like something I wished I had several times in the past few weeks. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Do you guys know we at just passed thru a BLACK visi.comHOLE in space?
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 2009-02-05, Dirk Uys dirkc...@gmail.com wrote: The type of user I don't like is the ignorant type. Innocent users are ok, they don't know, but ignorant users choose not to know. Surely there are things you use without knowing how they work. You probably use a phone, but do you _really_ know how the cellular system works? How about the landline phone system? The water supply system? Sewage treatment? Do you know how a refinery works? A chemical plant? How about the CPU in your computer. Do you actually know how it works? And so often these ignorant users demand that they should be able to do anything on a computer. If you wish to benefit from using computers, you should be prepared to spend some time to get to know how the stuff works. The more you want to do, the more you need to know. Not: I want amarok without mysql and xyz plugin running all silky and smooth, but don't give me any command line run-arounds or lots of talk about USE flags. We're all ignorant about 99% of the things we use. You just happened to choose a different 1% than some other people. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! I am covered with at pure vegetable oil and I am visi.comwriting a best seller!
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On 2009-02-05, Steven Lembark lemb...@wrkhors.com wrote: A downside is that you'll need fast machines to comfortably build packages. I wouldn't use it on my Pentium 3 800Mhz for example. That would take ages to compile system/world with recent GCC versions. I guess GCC was much faster in the 2.x versions back then? How painful is it, really, to run the job when you are asleep or away from the machine? Cron the update or use at to get the changes you want when you are away from the console. If you can spend a week installing Gentoo, it's not a problem. If you need to have a machine up and running in an hour, it's a problem. Building OOo on the last install I did took well over 30 hours. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! HOORAY, Ronald!! at Now YOU can marry LINDA visi.comRONSTADT too!!
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Grant Edwards wrote: On 2009-02-05, Dirk Uys dirkc...@gmail.com wrote: The type of user I don't like is the ignorant type. Innocent users are ok, they don't know, but ignorant users choose not to know. Surely there are things you use without knowing how they work. You probably use a phone, but do you _really_ know how the cellular system works? that is not needed. But reading the manual of the phone is. How about the landline phone system? The water supply system? Sewage treatment? Do you know how a refinery works? A chemical plant? How about the CPU in your computer. Do you actually know how it works? irrelevant to the problem discussed. But yes, I know how sewage treatment works. We're all ignorant about 99% of the things we use. You just happened to choose a different 1% than some other people. no. Some people read the manuals that come with the tools they get, others don't and then complain when something does not work or sue someone because they hurt themselves. The second group are idiots. There are lots of idiots - but you should NEVER cater for them or you create more of them. And the last thing this world needs is more idiots.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 15:26:30 + (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote: If you can spend a week installing Gentoo, it's not a problem. If you need to have a machine up and running in an hour, it's a problem. Building OOo on the last install I did took well over 30 hours. The GRP packages were certainly useful for that. I installed Gentoo on an iBook, including a full KDE desktop, in a little over an hour. But that was several years ago,when GRP CDs were available. Of course, it wasn't optimised to my needs, but changing the USE flags and an emerge -e world (while the computer was in use) fixed that. Compiling that lot on a 1GHz G4 took over a day, about 2 days when you included OOo. -- Neil Bothwick WinErr 003: Dynamic linking error - Your mistake is now in every file signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] cnn.com flash videos crash firefox
What could there be that wasn't already exposed during a very long election campaign? A log. Everything that's censored in the mass media. I'm still very interested in suggestions on uncensored media. I watched one episode of Global Pulse by Link TV, this one (although they seem to be down ATM): http://www.linktv.org/video/3552 They talk about how the different major media organizations report the Russia/Ukraine gas pipeline issue differently, and they roll through clips of each organization's broadcast to show how they each approach it from different angles. Very professionally done. - Grant
[gentoo-user] accessing a bash
Hey guys.. random Linux question. If i have a bash process running on my machine that i am not 'attatched' to is there anyway to access it and see what it is doing short of just killing it? Thanks. --- N: Jon Hardcastle E: j...@ehardcastle.com '..Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.' ---
Re: [gentoo-user] accessing a bash
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Jon Hardcastle wrote: Hey guys.. random Linux question. If i have a bash process running on my machine that i am not 'attatched' to is there anyway to access it and see what it is doing short of just killing it? open files: lsof everything else: strace
Re: [gentoo-user] accessing a bash
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:04 AM, Jon Hardcastle jd_hardcas...@yahoo.comwrote: Hey guys.. random Linux question. If i have a bash process running on my machine that i am not 'attatched' to is there anyway to access it and see what it is doing short of just killing it? Thanks. See if it has a parent process by running pstree. It could be that you ran something in console or that you su-ed at some other instance.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
Stroller wrote: [...] To be honest, I am surprised this notion of optimised executables has stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old joke to many of us who were around in 2004. But AFAIK, it *was* faster because Gentoo used the egcs fork of GCC which did produce faster code. This was probably the origin of the Gentoo performance thingy. It was true. Wikipedia also notes this, and further states that the name Gentoo was chosen (previously it was Enoch) because of this speed difference between Gentoo and other Distros (the Gentoo species is the fastest swimming penguin). Soon after though, egcs merged back to gcc and all other distros became just as fast. So it was good while it lasted. But this Gentoo performance cliché seems to stick around till today.
[gentoo-user] Re: accessing a bash
Jon Hardcastle wrote: Hey guys.. random Linux question. If i have a bash process running on my machine that i am not 'attatched' to is there anyway to access it and see what it is doing short of just killing it? Thanks. Give us the output of ps aux | grep bash and we might be able to tell what it does.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 10:18 AM, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote: Stroller wrote: [...] To be honest, I am surprised this notion of optimised executables has stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old joke to many of us who were around in 2004. But AFAIK, it *was* faster because Gentoo used the egcs fork of GCC which did produce faster code. This was probably the origin of the Gentoo performance thingy. It was true. Wikipedia also notes this, and further states that the name Gentoo was chosen (previously it was Enoch) because of this speed difference between Gentoo and other Distros (the Gentoo species is the fastest swimming penguin). Soon after though, egcs merged back to gcc and all other distros became just as fast. So it was good while it lasted. But this Gentoo performance cliché seems to stick around till today. The power of good marketing! ;-) - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: optimized for your system -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Stroller wrote: [...] To be honest, I am surprised this notion of optimised executables has stuck around long enough that you've heard it, but it's an old joke to many of us who were around in 2004. But AFAIK, it *was* faster because Gentoo used the egcs fork of GCC which did produce faster code. gentoo never did that.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 2/5/2009 7:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. They should read the manual is *not* a valid design goal for a system. At best, it's a justification or rationalization when outside constraints force a design to be non-intuitive. Given the choice between two otherwise equally functional systems (of any sort -- electronic, mechanical, digital, etc); if one requires me to spend extensive time reading an instruction manual to use and the other is designed to be easy to use out of the box -- the idiot is the person wasting their time reading instead of being productive. To use your own example, I have no problem figuring out how to start my car, turn on the A/C, tune my radio, and drive to work without reading the automobile manual. If Gentoo's installer *has* to be difficult because it's the only way to supply additional benefits or features, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is *stuck* being difficult because there is a lack of resources interested in making it better, that's an upsetting, but equally reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is difficult *on purpose* just to make Gentoo hard to use, that's ridiculous. --K
Re: [gentoo-user] KDE-4.2 missing Oxygen
On Wednesday 04 February 2009 21:28:30 Alan McKinnon wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 20:56:33 Naga wrote: On Wednesday 04 February 2009 18:32:52 Neil Bothwick wrote: On Wed, 4 Feb 2009 18:13:47 +0100, Naga wrote: I was wondering if I'm the only one who is missing the Oxygen desktop theme when installing KDE-4.2 from the kde-testing overlay? It's there when you install 4.2 from the main portage tree. My bad, I did install from portage, kde-testing was before. Do you use kdeprefix? I've installed 4.2 from both kde-testing and portage. Oxygen theme is definitely there. I can think of two things to look for: How did you install 4.2? emerge @kde-4.2? some other way? From kde-testing emerge @kde-4.2 from portage emerge kde-meta. Did you rebuild Qt packages after installing KDE4? That is doing to eat your kittens, themes and other stuff I've reinstalled KDE-4.2 from portage at least 3 times, and in between compiling it from svn. The svn copy always works ok, the portage one is always missing Oxygen. Guess I'll stick to svn... Thanks all for trying to help. /Regards Naga
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Mike Edenfield wrote: On 2/5/2009 7:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. They should read the manual is *not* a valid design goal for a system. At best, it's a justification or rationalization when outside constraints force a design to be non-intuitive. Given the choice between two otherwise equally functional systems (of any sort -- electronic, mechanical, digital, etc); if one requires me to spend extensive time reading an instruction manual to use and the other is designed to be easy to use out of the box -- the idiot is the person wasting their time reading instead of being productive. and not one single complex system is 'idiotproof'. To use your own example, I have no problem figuring out how to start my car, turn on the A/C, tune my radio, and drive to work without reading the automobile manual. but before you were even allowed to drive a car you had to take lessons and pass a test. If Gentoo's installer *has* to be difficult because it's the only way to supply additional benefits or features, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is *stuck* being difficult because there is a lack of resources interested in making it better, that's an upsetting, but equally reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is difficult *on purpose* just to make Gentoo hard to use, that's ridiculous. gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P
[gentoo-user] Re: KDE-4.2 missing Oxygen
Naga wrote: I've reinstalled KDE-4.2 from portage at least 3 times, and in between compiling it from svn. The svn copy always works ok, the portage one is always missing Oxygen. Do you have kde-base/kdebase-desktoptheme installed? That's Oxygen.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed.
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 12:36, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:. I can't think of a single reason why the installer should operate in a different manner to the way the thing will be used. Because installation is boring. The easier it is, the better. wrong. The installation needs a certain difficulty to keep idiots away. Nobody needs idiots (except maybe ubuntu). That is insulting. My mother uses Ubuntu. Thanks for calling her an idiot. Obviously if someone wants to use his computer in order to get something done without doing a Ph.D on Portage and /etc first, then that person is an idiot. Great thinking. Fortunately, there are people (like the Ubuntu folks) who don't think that way and are trying to make Linux more popular to people who need a computer to do tasks that are not related to the computer itself. I don't agree with the way to see it of Nikos. However, even if I agree with you in that having Ubuntu (which is another choice) is a good thing, I don't agree that Gentoo should be yet-another-ubuntu. Gentoo is Gentoo, and Ubuntu is Ubuntu. If your mother uses Ubuntu, that's fine. But we don't need to lower the acceptance level of Gentoo so your mother can use it. I think that it's fair to ask a minimal degree of will to read and learn for a distro like Gentoo. The rest of Gentoo users do it, no one died that I know of because of it. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) and gentoo was never meant for the clueless.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) It seems to me that not to many normal people would use Gentoo anyway. By and large, we're probably geeks...I mean, c'mon, this is a mailing list for users of a distro of linux. Your normal My computer gets myspace group isn't exactly our audience.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 14:53, Saphirus Sage escribió: Cocoy Dayao wrote: There are certain situations where the step-by-step installer isn't adequate. For instance, when I was installing gentoo on my G4, it was straight forward and easy, but when I decided to do a minimal install on my Everex laptop, I needed to use initrd, which I previoiusly had no experience with and the Gentoo handbook didn't mention. Granted, it eventually worked, but I would be hesitent to say that there was adequate documentation on it. And that's why we speack about a community effort, and bugtrackers exist. So you can let the relevant people know and the next one to read the handbook will find a solution if s/he has the same problem. The handbooks didn't magically appear out of thin air in 1 second as they are now, nor did Gentoo. It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. No manual is perfect, the difference is that here at least you have the chance to change it to make it better. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 16:23, Grant Edwards escribió: On 2009-02-05, Dirk Uys dirkc...@gmail.com wrote: The type of user I don't like is the ignorant type. Innocent users are ok, they don't know, but ignorant users choose not to know. Surely there are things you use without knowing how they work. You probably use a phone, but do you _really_ know how the cellular system works? How about the landline phone system? The water supply system? Sewage treatment? Do you know how a refinery works? A chemical plant? How about the CPU in your computer. Do you actually know how it works? And so often these ignorant users demand that they should be able to do anything on a computer. If you wish to benefit from using computers, you should be prepared to spend some time to get to know how the stuff works. The more you want to do, the more you need to know. Not: I want amarok without mysql and xyz plugin running all silky and smooth, but don't give me any command line run-arounds or lots of talk about USE flags. We're all ignorant about 99% of the things we use. You just happened to choose a different 1% than some other people. That's completely unfair. If you don't want to know how a fridge work you buy a fridge, not the tools to make a fridge, which is what Gentoo is. If you don't want to make the fridge yourself, go Ubuntu and let us build our fridges ourselves. Why do you want to spoil our fun? Isn't there enough premade distros that are easy to handle around? -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 20:00, Mike Edenfield escribió: On 2/5/2009 7:01 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: no. He is an idiot if he does not read the docs. Simple. Like people who don't read the manual to their car or vcr and then complaining if something does not work. Idiots. They should read the manual is *not* a valid design goal for a system. At best, it's a justification or rationalization when outside constraints force a design to be non-intuitive. Gentoo is not a distro. You don't use it, It's a metadristro that can be used to build a proper distro, after that you can use the final product. Given the choice between two otherwise equally functional systems (of any sort -- electronic, mechanical, digital, etc); if one requires me to spend extensive time reading an instruction manual to use and the other is designed to be easy to use out of the box -- the idiot is the person wasting their time reading instead of being productive. To use your own example, I have no problem figuring out how to start my car, turn on the A/C, tune my radio, and drive to work without reading the automobile manual. No. Your point is valid but in the other sense. If you are choosing the wrong tool for you, it's your problem. If you don't want to build a system from scratch but you insist on using Gentoo and you insist that it MUST be easy to use, then you are the one that screw the thing up. I want to remove some screws, but I want to do it with my hammer!!! If Gentoo's installer *has* to be difficult because it's the only way to supply additional benefits or features, that's a perfectly reasonable argument. If Gentoo's installer is *stuck* being difficult because there is a lack of resources interested in making it better, that's an upsetting, but equally reasonable argument. As said in other posts, I think that the true reason is that there's not any interest in doing it. Many attempts have been started and abandoned in the past. If Gentoo's installer is difficult *on purpose* just to make Gentoo hard to use, that's ridiculous. It's not dificult. You can read, you can do it. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 21:03:30 +0100 (CET), Jesús Guerrero wrote: Gentoo is not a distro. You don't use it, It's a metadristro that can be used to build a proper distro, after that you can use the final product. It's a flatpack distro ;-) -- Neil Bothwick Hi, I'm not a signature virus. Why don't you just copy me into your signature? signature.asc Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Saphirus Sage wrote: Nikos Chantziaras wrote: You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :) It seems to me that not to many normal people would use Gentoo anyway. By and large, we're probably geeks...I mean, c'mon, this is a mailing list for users of a distro of linux. Your normal My computer gets myspace group isn't exactly our audience. It seems Sabayon Linux did quite some good work here. And it's still Gentoo. Too bad they broke quite stuff, but the idea is nice: A Gentoo that isn't only for geeks and gurus.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP and gentoo was never meant for the clueless. Ah, come on Volker, say what's true. My 81 year old dad uses Gentoo and he cannot use vi. Maybe you really meant, but didn't say, 'Gentoo was never meant for the clueless administrator'. Once it's up and running it's Linux. Nothing more. Nothing less. What's the big deal? - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. - Mark
[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Linux has reached a point where it tries to appeal to users. You don't ask them anymore to go fix the problems. You have to fix them yourself. I believe any distro that doesn't adopt a development model where user support and QA are important, is going to die at some point. Linux doesn't seem to have gathered new users since ages; 2003 maybe? Or 2004? No visible growth since then. With no new users, and most users converting to Ubuntu and openSUSE, there's simply not enough users left to keep other distros alive.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: because it kept the 'i am too cool to read the docs' idiots away. Being forced to read the documentation is a good thing - and it did not hurt gentoo's popularity. Only after it started to catering to idiots and more and more of loud mouthed 'I am the centre of the universe, I don't need to read docs, use google or bugzilla. I demand an answer and help NOW' assholes came on board, the popularity went down. The above statement is ridiculous and I've said my piece on it several times. Not worth the bother of debunking it yet again so I'll just link the infamous Elitist Chowderhead thread from four years ago. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/109660/focus=109984 What people forget is that a well built installer has to run through a number of steps that get you a running system. Ideally a system that has exactly what you expect to be installed and how. Whether this is a GUI, ncurses based, whatever is besides the point. An installer project builds a set of tools that eventually can be used to install hundreds of machines in a uniform way and that is damn useful. kashani
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: SNIP and gentoo was never meant for the clueless. Ah, come on Volker, say what's true. My 81 year old dad uses Gentoo and he cannot use vi. Maybe you really meant, but didn't say, 'Gentoo was never meant for the clueless administrator'. in that case it is YOU who had to read the documentation.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 21:25, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Right. But people who don't want to do some work to change the things have no right to complain either. Unless they are paying a monthly bill how you do on your sports club. Do you pay here? -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 22:01, Jesús Guerrero escribió: El Jue, 5 de Febrero de 2009, 21:25, Nikos Chantziaras escribió: Jesús Guerrero wrote: It's not The community vs. you, you are part of the community since the very moment you start using linux. Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Right. But people who don't want to do some work to change the things have no right to complain either. Unless they are paying a monthly bill how you do on your sports club. Do you pay here? To reword it, if you like it use it, if you don't then don't use it. It's not about joining a weird community as you defined it or about making friends here. I am not here to make friends since I -as most people here I guess- do have a social life that's not inside my monitor. This is about people that's giving you for free a tool to do your work. And you can't even bother to fill in a bug? Well, whatever... I supposed that complaining on mailing lists instead will fix the issue faster... -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:25:11 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Most people don't want to be some part of some weird community. They just want to use a computer. If they were looking for friends, they might try the local sports club. Who are these people on whose behalf you speak? Why should Gentoo try to cater for them when there are already a zillion distros doing that? Gentoo is not a distro for most people. Linux has reached a point where it tries to appeal to users. You don't ask them anymore to go fix the problems. You have to fix them yourself. I believe any distro that doesn't adopt a development model where user support and QA are important, is going to die at some point. Linux doesn't seem to have gathered new users since ages; 2003 maybe? Or 2004? No visible growth since then. With no new users, and most users converting to Ubuntu and openSUSE, there's simply not enough users left to keep other distros alive. On what do you base these claims? Stating that Linux has no new users does not make it true, but reading emails from people stating I am new to Linux, as I do most days, would indicate that the opposite is true. QA is important to the Gentoo devs. As for user support, I thing we get tremendous value for money from the devs, worth every penny we pay them. Gentoo arose out of a dissatisfaction wit the way other distros did things, so using them as a yardstick now renders the whole project pointless. If you don't like the way Gentoo does things, you can either work to improve it or use something else more suited to your needs. If all you want is a GUI for the installer, take a look at Quickstart and see if there is a way to add a configuration GUI to it. -- Neil Bothwick ... Yummy, said Pooh, as he hilted his paw into the honeypot. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Sorry for top posting, it's BlackBerry's behavior. I cannot agree when you say that gentoo docs are written for geeks. Gentoo's install guide is very well written and i18ed, at least in my native language. It takes the user step by step to prepare his enviroment, to install the distro, and to finalize it, always explaining every step and giving choices. First time I installed gentoo my only linux experience was 8 months of suse, I am not an IT person, but I haven't found the installation that painful. === TopperH === Momesso Andrea -Original Message- From: Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:43:43 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh? Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 05 Februar 2009, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: gentoo's installer is EASY if you just read the docs. I'd rather be installing and waiting for the installer to tell me what to do rather than go read docs somewhere else :P and when the nice installer fucks up, you are screwed. You're screwed anyway if you can't use the CLI installer correctly. Reading the docs is fine, but they're written for geeks, not normal people. Normal people don't have a clue what the docs are talking about :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll The ubuntu installer did not tell me which drive it was installing the boot loader onto, nor did it give me a choice -- it chose the one it thought was appropriate (and it was wrong). If you google for ubuntu grub sata ide you can see it happens to nearly everyone who has a mixture of IDE and SATA drives where they boot from IDE but linux gives sda to sata and sdc to IDE or whatever.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: Paul Hartman wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. I helped my brother install Ubuntu and the lack of control over grub was frustrating. It just did what it wanted to do without asking (which was install grub onto the wrong drive with the wrong drive numbers, because the BIOS boot order did not match Ubuntu's detected drive order). If that drive had been part of a RAID or had some important metadata in the boot sector, it could have been a disaster. No distro is perfect. Gentoo is perfect for me, though :) I think you mean to say no boot loader is perfect. ;-) --Joshua Doll The ubuntu installer did not tell me which drive it was installing the boot loader onto, nor did it give me a choice -- it chose the one it thought was appropriate (and it was wrong). If you google for ubuntu grub sata ide you can see it happens to nearly everyone who has a mixture of IDE and SATA drives where they boot from IDE but linux gives sda to sata and sdc to IDE or whatever. Actually the kernel has assigned most hdd, etc. some form of sd* for awhile now. The only thing that is labeled different, that I've seen in awhile is my dvd burner. Anyways getting to my statement I was being facetious. I can't think of a single piece of software that is perfect, except for maybe hello, world!, but that's not very useful. --Joshua Doll
[gentoo-user] Flash Drive Install
Once you go through the steps instructed here, http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml Can the live CD install be altered to work just like a normal Gentoo system? I have managed to get my hands on a 16GB flash drive, and am thinking of trying it out. Thanks Sean
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Joshua D Doll joshua.d...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Handbook and other Official gentoo docs are well and written. I feel they are so well written and informative that a new user could read and follow what the doc is trying to convey. --Joshua Doll I agree. Everything except the grub part. It's well written but it requires more knowledge about the actual hardware than the rest of it, especially if you do it wrong and have to recover. - Mark What I find ironic here, I have been know to use copy and paste to install Gentoo. I may have to change a mount point or a partition location, hda2 to hda6 or something, but otherwise, copy and paste works well. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll
[gentoo-user] Why does VMWare 6.5 ask for vmware-config.pl?
On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 08:44 +, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 08:21:35 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote: look at the output of equery files vmware-workstation if vmware-config.pl isn't there, and it should be you have a buggy ebuild It isn't in the equery output. vmware-config is no more with 6.5. I've not had to reconfigure the network, but rebuilding the modules after a kernel change is done by emerging vmware-modules. vmware-netcfg may do what you need, it looks as though they make have split it into separate tools. OK, so the question is why does VMWare not work, ie. it still asks for vmware-config.pl and doesn't run. I recompiled vmware-modules, I've made sure /usr/src/linux points at my current kernel. $ sudo /etc/init.d/vmware start Password: * Starting VMware services: [ ok ] * Virtual machine monitor [ ok ] * Virtual machine communication interface [ ok ] * Blocking file system[ ok ] * Virtual ethernet[ ok ] * Shared Memory Available [ ok ] $ vmware Logging to /tmp/vmware-iain/setup-6256.log filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vmmon.ko license:GPL v2 description:VMware Virtual Machine Monitor. author: VMware, Inc. depends: vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vmnet.ko license:GPL v2 description:VMware Virtual Networking Driver. author: VMware, Inc. depends: vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vmblock.ko version:1.1.2.0 license:GPL v2 description:VMware Blocking File System author: VMware, Inc. srcversion: 768B08090715A2D8C721BF3 depends: vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS parm: root:The directory the file system redirects to. (charp) filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vmci.ko license:GPL v2 description:VMware Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI). author: VMware, Inc. depends: vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vsock.ko license:GPL v2 version:1.0.0.0 description:VMware Virtual Socket Family author: VMware, Inc. srcversion: EC2E0BE1F6FB039D1109ADB depends:vmci vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS filename: /lib/modules/2.6.28-tuxonice-r1/misc/vmmon.ko license:GPL v2 description:VMware Virtual Machine Monitor. author: VMware, Inc. depends: vermagic: 2.6.28-tuxonice-r1 SMP preempt mod_unload CORE2 4KSTACKS Then the workstation window opens to my virtual machine. I click Run and I get this message on the terminal while the VM has a black screen: VMware Workstation Error: VMware Workstation is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured for your running kernel. To (re-)configure it, your system administrator must find and run vmware-config.pl. For more information, please see the VMware Workstation documentation. Press Enter to continue... after pressing enter in the terminal, a popup appears on the gui: Unable to change virtual machine power state: VMware Workstation cannot connect to the virtual machine. Make sure you have rights to run the program and to access all directories it uses and rights to access all directories for temporary files.. When I press OK, the VM returns to the overview screen. Strangely, I can't edit any of the VM settings. I have rw permission on the entire directory and files containing the VM, and I'm in the vmware group. Any other suggestions? thanks, -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au An empty cab drove up and Sarah Bernhardt got out. -Arthur Baer, American comic and columnist
Re: [gentoo-user] /etc/init.d/: ntpd or ntp-client?
On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 13:04 +, Stroller wrote: On 4 Feb 2009, at 21:29, Drew Tomlinson wrote: ... To avoid running ntp-client and ntpd, look at the -g switch for ntpd. It will make the big jump once and then keep the clock in sync. So NTPD_OPTS=-g in /etc/conf.d/ntpd ? Stroller. yep: -g, --panicgate Allow the first adjustment to be Big. -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it. -- Austin O'Malley
SOLVED: Re: [gentoo-user] Why does VMWare 6.5 ask for vmware-config.pl?
On Fri, 2009-02-06 at 08:44 +0930, Iain Buchanan wrote: OK, so the question is why does VMWare not work, ie. it still asks for vmware-config.pl and doesn't run. after playing with vmware-netcfg, searching more on google and chmoding various things, all to no effect, I remembered this file: /etc/vmware/not_configured I deleted it, started vmware, and now it works! thanks for the suggestions. -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au Croll's Query: If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Joshua D Doll wrote: Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll I have to say that I have had times that even after someone showed me how to use a command, the man page made no sense still. If it doesn't make sense when you know a little about using it, how can it make sense when you don't? I think examples is a good way to do that and the more the better. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Saphirus Sage wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Dale wrote: Joshua D Doll wrote: Mark Knecht wrote: On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com wrote: I completely agree. I like the control also. I only took a *very* small exception to Joshua's statement that a 'new user' could read, follow it and understand what it's telling him/her to do and then do it and come out with a working machine. I think it's true if the new user builds exactly the 3 partition example shown in the docs and does *only* the very basic install on a machine that doesn't have Windows, etc. However I think that the docs (not the software!) could be improved to handle things like dual-boot, either another distro or windows, etc. which personally I think 'new users' come up against. Issues about stuff like where to put the MBR, why and why not to do that sort of thing, requires (or is vastly enhanced) if that new user has some knowledge about hard drives, booting, etc. - Mark I 100% agree that the docs can and should cover more. Maybe a flowchart would be useful? --Joshua Doll I wish the man pages had more examples. Give me a real world example and I can wrap my poor brain around what it should look like when I do something. Dale :-) :-) Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. --Joshua Doll Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. Just cause you haven't run across an uninformative/incomplete man page doesn't mean others haven't. Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! You shouldn't flame someone because your experiences are different from their's. --Joshua Doll I have to say that I have had times that even after someone showed me how to use a command, the man page made no sense still. If it doesn't make sense when you know a little about using it, how can it make sense when you don't? I think examples is a good way to do that and the more the better. Dale :-) :-) I'd wager that examples are the responsibility of third parties. Frankly, if I've read a man page and found it inadequate, a quick google search usually will come back with enough examples to resolve any problem. I'm not saying a manpage should be without any examples at all, but if the provided documentation isn't thorough enough, that's what these mailing lists and forums are for.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 5 Feb 2009, at 23:12, Joshua D Doll wrote: ... Also man pages lacking valuable information is the reason why GNU has switched to the majority of their packages to using info! I suspect the reason for this is far more about navigation then contents. GNU can rewrite all their man pages if they don't like the content, but `man` does not offer the facilities to hyperlink sections that `info` does. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 5 Feb 2009, at 23:03, Saphirus Sage wrote: ... Man pages are notoriously bad. The gentoo handbook and other official docs are great OTOH. Man pages notoriously bad?! Now that's a stance I can hardly understand, they've always been a godsend in my experience! Just practice using a command a few times, look through the options and learn it in the period of ten minutes, and a man page has done its purpose. If this stance is due to your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, then do not apply the lacking to anything but your own capacity for comprehension. To be fair there is an art to reading manpages. Manpages tend to be terse yet authoritative, but it was only after (perhaps) a couple of years of using Unix (and perhaps longer) that I learned to appreciate them. I think manpages tend to assume that the reader is already proficient with Unix and often that the reader is familiar with regular expressions. They tend to use the academic language of computer science which may be completely baffling to someone who is technically logically very competent but self-taught. My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for. Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 4:03, Stroller escribió: My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for. If all the problem about man pages is navigation another pager can be used. If all the problem is that they are not graphical, install konqueror and use man:/. If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page. -- Jesús Guerrero
Re: [gentoo-user] cnn.com flash videos crash firefox
* Grant emailgr...@gmail.com wrote: Can you recommend a non-biased news source online? http://www.breakthematrix.com/ http://www.infowars.com/ cu -- - Enrico Weigelt== metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/ - Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce: http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions: http://patches.metux.de/ -
[gentoo-user] Using portage through NFS
I have read the guide on gentoo-wiki about setting up portage to work over NFS[0] and have it mostly working. I have two issues that I would like to work out: 1) I use sync-eix to update portage and my overlays (via layman). I want the client to still be able to run sync-eix, but have it only run `emerge --metadata` (no `emerge --sync` or `layman --sync ALL`). What do I need to change in the eix-sync.conf? (Man, that's a long man page :) ) Better yet, since my overlays are all in the exported NFS filesystem (hence, the eix database would be the same across all clients), is it possible to export my eix cache by hardlinking it into the NFS share? If so, how do I make the client's eix use this database instead of the one at /var/cache/eix? 2) I use the buildpkg feature on both the server and the client since the client can usually use the packages for its own installations (getbinpkg). However, sometimes I require different use flags for the client, but I still want to keep the package locally so I can restore it later if I need to. I have the NFS share mounted ro to keep the client from overwriting what is on the server, so I am guessing that portage will throw some kind of error when it tries to save the package to disk. I was thinking of getting around this by using some kind of union mount. However, I don't understand how union mounts work or if they can be used for my situation. What I would like is to have some directory, lets say /var/lib/portage/packages, that I union mount on top of the exported NFS share, at /mnt/nfs_portage/packages. I noticed in the Portage w/ SquashFS/aufs howto[1], they used aufs to create a rw layer on top of a ro SquashFS. This sounds kind of what I want, except it appears that aufs is memory-backed instead of disk-backed. Is this so? The clients are all strapped for memory, so a memory-backed fs won't be feasible. Does anyone have any ideas or details on how I might implement this? Thanks, Chris Lieb [0] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Sharing_Portage_over_NFS [1] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Squashed_Portage_Tree
[gentoo-user] Using portage through NFS
I have read the guide on gentoo-wiki about setting up portage to work over NFS[0] and have it mostly working. I have two issues that I would like to work out: 1) I use sync-eix to update portage and my overlays (via layman). I want the client to still be able to run sync-eix, but have it only run `emerge --metadata` (no `emerge --sync` or `layman --sync ALL`). What do I need to change in the eix-sync.conf? (Man, that's a long man page :) ) Better yet, since my overlays are all in the exported NFS filesystem (hence, the eix database would be the same across all clients), is it possible to export my eix cache by hardlinking it into the NFS share? If so, how do I make the client's eix use this database instead of the one at /var/cache/eix? 2) I use the buildpkg feature on both the server and the client since the client can usually use the packages for its own installations (getbinpkg). However, sometimes I require different use flags for the client, but I still want to keep the package locally so I can restore it later if I need to. I have the NFS share mounted ro to keep the client from overwriting what is on the server, so I am guessing that portage will throw some kind of error when it tries to save the package to disk. I was thinking of getting around this by using some kind of union mount. However, I don't understand how union mounts work or if they can be used for my situation. What I would like is to have some directory, lets say /var/lib/portage/packages, that I union mount on top of the exported NFS share, at /mnt/nfs_portage/packages. I noticed in the Portage w/ SquashFS/aufs howto[1], they used aufs to create a rw layer on top of a ro SquashFS. This sounds kind of what I want, except it appears that aufs is memory-backed instead of disk-backed. Is this so? The clients are all strapped for memory, so a memory-backed fs won't be feasible. Does anyone have any ideas or details on how I might implement this? Thanks, Chris Lieb [0] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Sharing_Portage_over_NFS [1] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Squashed_Portage_Tree
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
On 6 Feb 2009, at 03:08, Jesús Guerrero wrote:
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 4:03, Stroller escribió:
My experience is that only after learning the syntax of manpages (is
that itself documented?) do I find most of them tremendously easy to
navigate to find the one specific option I'm looking for.
If all the problem about man pages is navigation another pager
can be used.
I didn't really mean navigate like that.
And in the quote above I wasn't criticising navigation of manpages.
I just mean that if there's one option I want to find (I don't know -
list by date order in `ls` for instance) then I just find it
tremendously EASY to find that in a man page. You can search for a
word using the normal old / of `less` and 9 times out of 10 you find
the command flag very quickly (if not immediately).
If you're new to a command that's been recommended to you, or an app
you've just installed, then I find the Synopsis section is
tremendously useful, but it has to be said that:
less [-[+]aBcCdeEfFgGiIJKLmMnNqQrRsSuUVwWX~]
[-b space] [-h lines] [-j line] [-k keyfile]
[-{oO} logfile] [-p pattern] [-P prompt] [-t tag]
[-T tagsfile] [-x tab,...] [-y lines] [-[z] lines]
[-# shift] [+[+]cmd] [--] [filename]...
doesn't make any sense to the untrained eye. It just looks like
gobbledegook. There's maybe a Linux n00b manual that explains the
syntax of man's Synopsis, but I'm sure I only learned to translate
the likes of the above after reading man pages for commands that I
already knew - learned through inference, osmosis and newsgroups.
If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with
man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page.
Yes, but there's a problem with the MAJORITY of contents, perhaps of
the majority of people writing manpages? It just seems to be a culture
of the way man pages are written. They make perfect sense only with
experience - don't get me wrong, I love 'em and at least to a degree I
think that's how it should be.
But I think the criticism of someone who finds man pages difficult to
read your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, ...your
own capacity for comprehension is a tad unfair.
Take a look at this:
DESCRIPTION
Less is a program similar to more (1), but which allows
backward move-
ment in the file as well as forward movement. Also, less does
not have
to read the entire input file before starting, so with
large input
files it starts up faster than text editors like vi (1).
Less uses
termcap (or terminfo on some systems), so it can run on a
variety of
terminals. There is even limited support for hardcopy
terminals. (On
a hardcopy terminal, lines which should be printed at the
top of the
screen are prefixed with a caret.)
Commands are based on both more and vi. Commands may be
preceded by a
decimal number, called N in the descriptions below. The
number is used
by some commands, as indicated.
The first sentence could far better be written Less is a program for
scrolling up down through textfiles - actually this highlights the
typical manpage charm of greater obscurity through complete
correctness. The second sentence doesn't seem valuable enough (these
days) for the main summary - it would be more useful to mention the
ability to search - and the 3rd sentence is more relevant to the 1970s
than today (the bracketed section which follows is more relevant to
the 16th century). Most newcomers to `less` will never have used
`more` or `vi`, and the last two sentences - well, there's just
something wrong with them. They're not very readable. I had to read
them twice myself - who the heck would think to use a NON-decimal
number, anyway?
Stroller.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoo's advantage: 'optimized for your system' -- huh?
El Vie, 6 de Febrero de 2009, 5:40, Stroller escribió:
less [-[+]aBcCdeEfFgGiIJKLmMnNqQrRsSuUVwWX~] [-b space] [-h lines] [-j
line] [-k keyfile] [-{oO} logfile] [-p pattern] [-P prompt] [-t tag]
[-T tagsfile] [-x tab,...] [-y lines] [-[z] lines]
[-# shift] [+[+]cmd] [--] [filename]...
doesn't make any sense to the untrained eye. It just looks like
gobbledegook. There's maybe a Linux n00b manual that explains the syntax
of man's Synopsis, but I'm sure I only learned to translate the likes of
the above after reading man pages for commands that I already knew -
learned through inference, osmosis and newsgroups.
I have no idea if that's documented in any place.
If the problem is contents then that's nothing to do with
man, but with whomever made (or didn't made) the page.
Yes, but there's a problem with the MAJORITY of contents, perhaps of
the majority of people writing manpages? It just seems to be a culture of
the way man pages are written. They make perfect sense only with
experience - don't get me wrong, I love 'em and at least to a degree I
think that's how it should be.
But I think the criticism of someone who finds man pages difficult to
read your own inadequate ability to read technical documents, ...your own
capacity for comprehension is a tad unfair.
Yes. I wasn't implying that you were wrong, just giving
some general tips that could be useful if the problem was
one of those that I was enumerating.
But sometimes, the amount of info to present is simply overwhelming.
To name just a couple of man pages that are really excellent I'd say
that the fvwm and bash ones are really good. But being rather long
they are better suited as reference guides. They are not tutorials,
that's for sure.
That's where the network nature of unix like OSes break into scene,
learning without having access to internet is harder, I can tell
from experience in my beginnings.
About the age of the pages, well, some of the packages are so old
and rarely need updates that they go mostly unmaintained for ages.
It's just a guess anyway.
--
Jesús Guerrero
[gentoo-user] testing a corrupt SD card
Hi all, recently my SD card just went bonkers. Unfortunately I lost a lot of photos on it (backups are useless until the data actually gets to the backup...) but fortunately I was able to use a program to recover about 170 photos. Anyway, I don't know if it was just static, shock, dead card, or phase of the moon, so I would like to see if the card is good before I continue to use it. I've reformatted it and I get: $ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mmcblk0p1 500960500960 0 100% /media/PICS so I created a file: dd if=/dev/urandom of=Desktop/random.img bs=1024 count=500960 then copied it to the card, and then copied it back as random-2.img. If I md5sum the two files, they are identical: $ md5sum random* 9dcac25cfd8585be5939c0ff969de310 random-2.img 9dcac25cfd8585be5939c0ff969de310 random.img Does that mean my memory card is good to go, or should I use some other method of bad sector detection? It's a Lexar Media 512Mb SD card, a couple of years old. Yes I know I can get a cheap 2Gb for $20 but I'm more interested in the principle of the test :) thanks for any tips! -- Iain Buchanan iaindb at netspace dot net dot au This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't. -- Douglas Hofstadter
[gentoo-user] Multiple architectures for portage CFLAGS?
Hello, I have encountered a problem maintaining my system using revdep-rebuild. I have both gcc-3.4.6 and gcc-4.3.2 installed on my machine. I mainly use gcc4, but sometimes I need g77 because many people at my laboratory use fortran code that is not compliant with gfortran standards. However, I have an Intel duo Core machine, so I usually have the CFLAG march=core2, but this is not supported in gcc3. Thus, if I need to rebuild gcc3 during revdep-rebuild, I have to do most of the updates by hand so that I can turn on an older march setting for gcc3 (such as march=nocona). Is there some way to set specfic CFLAGS for different gcc installs? Is my method of manually having different architectures for different gcc installations a risk? Regards, daid
