Re: [gentoo-user] Genlop wonky again

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 3:56 AM Wols Lists  wrote:

> On 06/01/2024 00:54, John Blinka wrote:
> > I’ve often found that it gives one estimate when multiple packages are
> > being built, then a much longer estimate for still-in-progress builds
> > once some of the builds have finished.
> >
> > That result defies common sense. Less remaining work has to take less,
> > not more (much more), time.
>
> Common sense isn't common and, well, often doesn't make sense.
>
> If there's a bunch of small builds skewing the "time per build" estimate
> down, as they drop off the list the estimated time per build will go up,
> and if the skew is serious enough it can even make the total estimated
> time go up ...


I don’t follow you. What is the source of this “skew”? Why should more
available processing power/less load cause builds to run more slowly? I’d
really like to  understand your point.

I have observed what I reported above many times, often when there are 2
builds running, a long one and a shorter one. Once the shorter one ends ,
the longer one’s time estimate via genlop increases , sometimes by 2x. And
it doesn’t actually take 2x longer - the new estimate is just grossly
wrong. Invoking skew or common sense being uncommon/wrong doesn’t change my
and the original poster’s observations that genlop sometimes gives really
bad time estimates. Something’s not right.

Respectfully

John

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Genlop wonky again

[John Blinka]

On Fri, Jan 5, 2024 at 6:52 PM Peter Humphrey  wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> I've just had some strange output from genlop on my 16-thread i5 box, thus:
>
> # genlop -t libreoffice | /bin/grep minute
>merge time: 37 minutes and 38 seconds.
>merge time: 52 minutes and 59 seconds.
>merge time: 46 minutes and 17 seconds.
>
> # genlop -c
>
>  Currently merging 11 out of 11
>
>  * app-office/libreoffice-7.5.9.2
>
>current merge time: 4 minutes and 3 seconds.
>ETA: 1 hour, 4 minutes and 24 seconds.
>
> ### Then, once the update finished:
>
> #  genlop -t libreoffice | /bin/grep minute
>merge time: 37 minutes and 38 seconds.
>merge time: 52 minutes and 59 seconds.
>merge time: 46 minutes and 17 seconds.
>merge time: 38 minutes and 40 seconds.
>
> I know genlop is, shall we say, not perfect, but how can it be so grossly
> wrong as that?
>
> I have this in make.conf, and it hasn't changed since I built the machine:
>
> grep '\-j' /etc/portage/make.conf
> EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs --load-average=12
> MAKEOPTS="-j12 -l12"
>
> --
> Regards,
> Peter.



I’ve often found that it gives one estimate when multiple packages are
being built, then a much longer estimate for still-in-progress builds once
some of the builds have finished.

That result defies common sense. Less remaining work has to take less, not
more (much more), time.

This observation tells me that the algorithm is very fundamentally broken.
The only way to answer how it can be so grossly wrong is to examine its
algorithm. That’s been on my to-do list for ages, but the thought of
debugging it has so far not risen to worth-the-effort status.

I use nearly the same build options as you, so perhaps we’re triggering the
same problem. But my less-work-implies-longer-time observations suggests to
me that the problem is more fundamental than details of jobs/threads/etc.

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Emerge load again

[John Blinka]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 10:39 AM Peter Humphreey 
wrote:l

>
> What am I missing?


I have much less powerful hardware than you but libreoffice (as a
stand-alone build) generates many more threads than 4 on my “cluster”.  I’m
also using distcc.

On the main box, I set
MAKEOPTS=“-j17 -l6”
On the other two less powerful ones -l is 5 and 3, but -j is the same.

On the main box, /etc/distcc/hosts contains
localhost/11 sophie/5,lzo tobey/3,lzo —localslots=11 —localslots_cpp=11

On sophie and tobey (my less powerful boxes) the hosts file contains
something similar but specific to those boxes. The localslots and
localslots_cpp numbers are 3 on tobey and 5 on sophie, and the order in
which the machines are mentioned changes (local machine first, then remote
machines in order of power).

This configuration is the result of a lot of experimentation rather than
just a theoretical calculation. The various guides that discuss how to tune
these numbers for best performance were modestly helpful in explaining what
the tuning parameters mean, but experimenting and watching the resulting
performance was the best teacher.

Hope this helps.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] rsync options after backup restore. Transfer speed again.

[John Blinka]

Not (unfortunately) speaking from my own experience, just from Googling:

https://serverfault.com/questions/211005/rsync-difference-between-checksum-and-ignore-times-options

discusses a —ignore-times option that may be useful. The upside is that it
uses the minimum amount of network bandwidth but at the cost of
checksumming everything on both sides. May take a while if you have a big
stash of video files. However, there’s a —checksum-choice option that, with
some testing of choices, might give you a quick-and-dirty checksum that’s
good enough for your purposes. Your backup files , hopefully, are not
corrupted.

I was just wondering why your new backup seemed to want to transfer
everything all over again. Just speculating, but maybe timestamps got
changed in the NAS box work you did? I saw a post (that I can’t find now)
that discussed the —modify-window option. This, I gather, is used when
rsyncing between 2 different filesystems with different ideas about how
precise to make the timestamps. A high precision timestamp file system’s
timestamp will be a little different from a low precision timestamp file
system’s timestamp, and will appear to be different timestamps to rsync,
even though ls -l reports the same times. The stat command will give you
full precision times, and maybe that will show a discrepancy. The
—modify-window option lets you fudge subtle time differences. This is just
speculation, and maybe an exotic and unlikely one, and definitely something
I’ve never done myself.

Another idea (again something I Googled but have never done) is to use the
mtree utility. Apparently you can use this to write out the characteristics
of a directory hierarchy - things like owner, permissions, checksum, size,
timestamps, etc. on every file under that directory. Save this output to a
file, then run mtree with this file as input on another directory
hierarchy, say the backup on your NAS. Looks like you can use it to just
check for differences, or you can use it to correct differences. If your
timestamps were different on your video machine and your backup NAS, this
looks like a way to make them match without transferring files.

Hope a little of this was useful. Good luck!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Controlling emerges

[John Blinka]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 12:13 PM Alan McKinnon 
wrote:

>
>
> If webkit-gtk is the only big package, have you considered:
>
> emerge -1v webkit-gtk && emerge -avuND @world?
>
>
> What you have is not a portage problem. It is a orthodox parallelism
> problem, and I think you are thinking your constraint is unique in the work
> - it isn't.
> With parallelism, trying to fiddle single nodes to improve things overall
> never really works out.
>
> Just my $0.02
>
>
> Alan
>

I use this idea, but it requires (for me) a more sophisticated
implementation. As is, it pulls in webkit-gtk-x.y.z and
webkit-gtk-x.y.z-r410 simultaneously - for my portage setup. I don’t have
the memory to handle both at the same time. It’s guaranteed to crash on my
system.

Instead, I do a preliminary emerge -p, saving the specific package
builds to a file. I then inspect the file to see what portage wants to do.
Too often, the file contains webkit-gtk-x.y.z and webkit-gtk-x.y.z-r410 in
sequence, usually preceded and followed by other packages. Portage always
wants to build both versions simultaneously - guaranteed crash for me.

Instead of invoking emerge, I write a little bash script to emerge the
preceding packages in parallel, followed by a serial webkit-gtk-x.y.z,
followed by a serial webkit-gtk-x.y.z-r410, and then finally all the
remaining packages. Four emerge invocations in sequence. The script builds
specific versions, ie, =net-libs/webkit-gtk-x.y.z, to ensure it builds only
1 package at a time. It’s trivial to write.

A problem arises when splitting up builds as you suggest. Emerge has its
own ideas about what it’s going to do - and in what sequence. When you try
to impose a build order not of its making, emerge will often do something
unintuitive and frustrating to you. I’ve learned to respect its sequencing.
This technique keeps portage happy and predictable by using its sequencing.
It gives me reliable overnight unattended upgrades.

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Highlight certain packages being upgraded

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Jul 8, 2023 at 4:33 AM Dale  wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> I was wondering.  Is there a way to highlight certain packages that are
> about to be upgraded?  Example, I like to know when some larger packages
> like Firefox, LOo, that excessively long qt package and a couple others
> are going to be upgraded.  Some that are listed in the world file show
> up in a darker green and are easier to see however, some are not. They
> are dependencies of another package but I'd like to have them stick out
> in the list of packages to be upgraded.  I don't recall ever seeing
> anyone mention this as a feature of emerge or heard of a way to
> configure such a thing either.  That said, it could be possible and just
> not well known.
>
> I'd like to be able to have those packages show up as red or something
> like that.  If it is possible.
>
> Thoughts?  Ever heard of such a thing?
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)


How about first making a list of all files needing to be rebuilt with
something like

emerge -pDuNv @world > builds

Then make a file “long” containing names of demanding builds like firefox
and qtwebengine, one to a line.

Finally, execute

grep -f long builds

which will print the names of those long builds if they’re due for
rebuilding or upgrading.

HTH

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] trying to get sd card reader to work

[John Blinka]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:38 PM Wol  wrote:

> On 09/06/2023 23:50, Lee wrote:
> > Modern kernels support damn near everything these days, the trick is
> > finding the right things to enable in the kernel! 
> >
> They can't support stuff if the hardware can't ...
>
> My first reaction was exactly that. I doubt the hardware is a true
> SD-card reader, they're pretty ancient.


The Inspiron 5759 in which the card reader finds itseif is ancient, circa
2015 if I have the date right. Don’t know what a “true” sd card reader is,
but appropriate kernel config renders cards readable and writeable. Enough
functionality for me.

>
>
> Good to know it all works, but if you're sticking a new card in an old
> reader, they may not be compatible.


Don’t know what constitutes new/old, but these are <1 year old cards.
Satisfied with empiric evidence that it all works. Have written mp3 files
to this card and played them via Arduino/attached mp3 board. Sufficient for
my purposes. Amazed that it all works! (Pushing beyond my comfort level
with card reader/Arduino/mp3 board/wiring all this stuff together.)

So…

have been using Gentoo for 20+ years. Have gradually morphed from numerical
analysis to sound processing to photography to elaborate wikis to modern
languages (go) to microcontroller stuff. Gentoo has supported me throughout
the journey, even as I’ve pushed way past my areas of expertise. Gentoo
 always seems to support what I want to do, provides documentation, and
comes with a community that can point the way when I’ve confused myself.
Best computing environment ever.

Thanks to every one making it possible!

John Blinka

>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] trying to get sd card reader to work

[John Blinka]

On Fri, Jun 9, 2023 at 9:09 AM Michael  wrote:

>
> Have you also enabled CONFIG_MMC_REALTEK_USB in your kernel?


Not until you suggested it. Works perfectly now. Thanks!

John

>

[gentoo-user] trying to get sd card reader to work

[John Blinka]

Hi, everyone,

I'm trying to get an SD card reader to work in Gentoo, but no success
so far. Hoping that someone can point out what I'm doing wrong.

The hardware is an old Dell Inspiron 5759 laptop featuring a RealTek
RTS5129 usb sd card reader. The kernel is gentoo-sources-6.1.31. The
sd card should contain a FAT file system with mp3 files, was written
by an older MacBook, and has been observed to supply sounds to an
Arduino/mp3 player setup.

I have followed the setup directions in
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PCSC-Lite using the ccid driver. I've
enabled hotplug in openrc per the instructions on that page.

I'm using a kernel with CONFIG_MISC_RTSX=m and CONFIG_MISC_RTSX_USB=m.
I have rc_hotplug="pcscd" in /etc/rc.conf and have confirmed that
module rtsx_usb is actually loaded. I've emerged pcsc-lite using the
default use flags of policykit, udev, and
python_single_target_python3_11.

When I put the sd card into its slot (or take it out), dmesg doesn't
report anything,  There isn't any device reported under /dev that
looks to my untrained eye like something that might belong to this
card reader. lsusb does report the presence of an RTS5129 card reader
controller.

I'm over my head debugging this. Haven't found much via Google and
nothing very recent. If anyone has ideas about what to try or how to
debug, I'd be very happy to try any and all suggestions.

Thanks!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Glibc and binpackages

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 12:54 PM Laurence Perkins 
wrote:

> I’m not sure if I’m doing something horribly wrong, or missing something
> blindingly obvious, but I’ve just had to boot a rescue shell yet again, so
> I’m going to ask.
>
>
>
> To save time and effort, I have my big, powerful machine create
> binpackages for everything when it updates, and then let all my smaller
> machines pull from that.  It works pretty well for the most part.
>

I do something quite similar, but have never had a glibc problem. Maybe the
problem lies in differences between the specific details of our two
approaches.

I have 3 boxes with different hardware but identical portage setup,
identical world file, identical o.s., etc, even identical CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS
and CPU_FLAGS_X86 despite different processors. Like you, I build on my
fastest box (but offload work via distcc), and save binpkgs. After a world
update (emerge -DuNv —changed-deps @world) , I rsync all repositories and
binpkgs from the fast box to the others. An emerge -DuNv —changed-deps
—usepkgonly @world on the other boxes completes the update. I do this
anywhere from daily to (rarely) weekly. Portage determines when to update
glibc relative to other packages. There hasn’t been a problem in years with
glibc.

I believe there are more sophisticated ways to supply updated portage trees
and binary packages across a local network.  I think there are others on
the list using these more sophisticated techniques successfully. Just a
plain rsync satisfies my needs.

It’s not clear to me whether you have the problem on  your big powerful
machine or on your other machines. If it’s the other machines, that
suggests that portage knows the proper build sequence on the big machine
and somehow doesn’t on the lesser machines. Why? What’s different?

Perhaps there’s something in my update frequency or maintaining an
identical setup on all my machines that avoids the problem you’re having?

If installing glibc first works, then maybe put a wrapper around your
emerge? Something that installs glibc first if there’s a new binpkg then
goes on to the remaining updates.

Just offered in case there’s a useful hint from my experience - not arguing
that mine is the one true way (tm).

HTH,

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix config and update

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 9:42 AM Wol  wrote:

> On 27/11/2022 13:21, John Blinka wrote:
>
> Systemd stores its *distro*supplied* config files in /usr.
>
> It stores its user-supplied config files in /etc.
>
> So when your distro updates systemd, it doesn't go anywhere near your
> local changes.
>
> Dovecot doesn't do it quite the same way, the default distro config
> loads a "config.local" file if it exists. So when your distro updates
> the master config, your local config is untouched.
>
> Postfix afaik just has one humungous config file, so when your distro
> updates the config, all your local changes are trashed :-(


If your goal is to update postfix without clobbering your artfully crafted
config file, then that’s what portage has been doing for me quite reliably
for the past 20-30 years. No effort required to protect anything in /etc
from updates. A new humongous postfix config file gets installed in
/etc/postfix/._cfg and your custom config file remains untouched.
It just works (tm). But you know that. I’m thinking I don’t at all
understand your issue.


>
> I don't want to faff about with special copies, backups, origs etc.
> Everything should "just work (tm)".


Fair enough! Not expecting that my faffing about would appeal to anyone but
me. ;)

John

Re: [gentoo-user] Postfix config and update

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 5:36 AM Wols Lists  wrote:

> I've just had emerge telling me it wants to trash my postfix config :-)
>
> I'm not sure whether my setup is actually using it, I use dovecot to
> deliver my mail, but is there any way I can stop random updates trying
> to trash my local changes? I'm rubbish at merging updates, and last time
> I tried I think the result was a complete mess.
>
> And I said I use dovecot to deliver mail - that takes a leaf out of the
> systemd book and has a master config file pointing to a local config
> file. Any updates to dovecot don't touch the local file, and don't touch
> my local settings.
>
> Can I do anything similar for postfix?
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
> I’m not a systemd user, so I don’t know precisely what systemd does. But
my /etc/postfix/main.cf is a soft link to “main.cf.works”, which was an
unoriginal name for an experimental config file that worked (as opposed to
a series of trial configs that didn’t). The original main.cf is renamed
main.cf.orig to keep it around as an unadulterated reference. Works for me
and doesn’t get clobbered in updates.

If I change any config file I usually rename it with a .orig suffix, alter
a copy of the original, and point to the altered copy with a soft link. The
soft link has the standard config file name. The altered copy has a name
different from anything expected by the installation. The soft link allows
me to try a bunch of different configs as I’m tuning the application.

Haven’t lost any custom configurations doing this, it makes my own
modifications abundantly clear, and it keeps an original around for when I
make a mess of my customizations. A quick diff between the .orig file and
any ._cfg files after an update shows me what’s changed in the update.

There are portage file merging tools for config updates, but I don’t use
them often enough to use them properly. So I’ve reverted to this simple
minded system. And backups!

HTH

John

Re: [gentoo-user] it keeps growing

[John Blinka]

orth having had the same computing environment
for more than a decade, even through substantial changes in my software
focus.  And it’s been cool enough here this year for the heat generated to
be welcome! ;)

Definitely *not* arguing against anyone else’s tastes in computing or
maintenance.  Just expressing my pleasure that Gentoo exists and that I get
to benefit from the great work of everyone who makes it possible!

John Blinka

[gentoo-user] [SOLVED?] Re: boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

So, the root of my booting problem is Linux doesn’t yet fully support my
intel core i5-10400 processor’s uhd 630 graphics.

I’ve been able to boot gentoo-sources-5.10.27 successfully using grub on my
new Asus Tuf Gaming B560M-Plus Wifi board equipped with an intel core
i5-10400 processor.

If you use the nomodeset kernel parameter, the boot messages scrolling by
on the screen look like what you’d expect from a normal grub/gentoo boot.

If you don’t use nomodeset,  a few initial lines of boot progress appear
from grub, then stop.  It looks like the boot has hung after the initrd,
but it hasn’t.  When the kernel takes over the display, something in the
modesetting goes wrong, and nothing is displayed from that point on.  But
the system boots fine otherwise.

You can’t start X11 even after following the instructions in
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xorg/Guide.  The Xorg log indicates that it
can’t find the proper driver.

After searching for the errors reported in the Xorg log, I stumbled on the
same problem I’m having in
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/642535/xorg-detects-no-displays-with-an-intel-uhd-630.
That article in turn refers to activity in
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/drm-tip, which is the direct rendering manager
development site.  What I gather from poking around there is that the intel
915 video driver has just been patched to solve the problem I’m having, but
uncertain whether the patch has made it out to the linux distros.  The
problem affects all intel processors with onboard uhd 630 graphics.

I’ve tried gentoo-sources 5.10.27 and 5.11.21.  Both have the video
problem.  I’ve also tried 5.12.4.  Can’t get it to boot.  Have also tried
Ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop. It works fine on my older intel boxes, but
displays the same video  problem on my new board/cpu.  Haven’t verified it,
but guessing none of these have the uhd 630 patch.

So, my previous suspects - secure boot, motherboard, grub, and my
customized kernel configs - are all innocent and working fine.  Just have
to wait for the patched intel driver to show up in gentoo-sources.

Thanks for all the helpful advice I received!  Couldn’t have gotten this
far without it.

John

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 8:03 AM Todd Goodman  wrote:

> This is likely not your issue with an integrated Intel GPU, but I was
> building a new system recently with UEFI, ASUS ROG mobo, and nvidia GPU and
> had this same issue.
>
> Surprisingly, this turned out to require me to set the simple framebuffer
> support in the kernel config (I also set the UEFI framebuffer support) or
> else I would get no screen output after the loading initial ramdisk...
> message.
>
> Just something I ran into for the first time ever recently
>

Thanks!  This may actually be the crux of all the issues I’ve had.  I’ve
now got this mobo booting gentoo from disk (instead of usb) while using
grub as the boot loader.  I have not gotten X11 working.  When I make the
kernel modifications advised in https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xorg/Guide, I
get the same black screen after loading the initrd as I did the first time
I started wrestling with this beast.  Adding “nomodeset” to the boot
command gives me back my screen, but it interferes with X11.  So, I’ll take
another look at the kernel config with your experience in mind.

Fingers crossed!

John

>

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 7:32 PM Dale  wrote:

>
> I had another thought.  Just in case it is a bug with grub that only
> affects certain hardware, maybe try a different bootloader?  Maybe try
> lilo or some other bootloader that works with your hardware.  I seem to
> recall you having EFI so I'm sure there is plenty of those to choose from.


Good thought - I just now got a successful boot using efibootmgr.  Peter
Humphries also suggested that somewhere in this thread, but also stated
that he couldn’t get grub to work on the same brand mobo (Asus).  I’d
almost believe that it’s a grub-Asus thing except for the fact that
Sysrescue and Ubuntu both boot successfully. And I think they use grub.

Maybe time to experiment with a different version or fresh installation of
grub.  Except that I’m burnt out on booting.  Think I’ll go outside and dig
some holes.

John

>

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 7:10 PM  wrote:

> >
> Have you recompiled the kernel?  Could be a random, erroneous write to
> disk or something in the kernel compile didn't go well.  I'd suggest also
> rebuilding the initrd


Yes.  Same problems with several kernels and associated initrds, the latter
produced by genkernel or dracut or even some gibberish I pretended was an
initrd.  From grub debug output, I believe the problem exists right before
the kernel tries to use the initrd.  It’s contents are irrelevant at that
stage.

and reinstalling grub.


That may or may not be the answer, but it’s such an obvious step. Will
definitely give that a try.

I.e. I think there is likely a kernel compile issue since it doesn't ever
> launch the kernel succesfully either on autopilot or when you run grub
> interactive.  Might also recompile grub, perhaps there's a change in
> compiler options that produces an incompatible (at least partially).  I
> also suggest the rebuild so you can be sure you have the right initrd and
> matching kernel.


I don’t think it’s a kernel compile issue.  I just now used efibootmgr to
create a uefi entry with kernel command line parameters to define the root
fs and initrd.  That worked.  That result focuses the blame on grub.

John

>

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

n

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 2:36 AM John Covici  wrote:

>
> I would look in the grub.cfg and give us exactly what is in the stanza
> you are using, including where it thinks the root file system is,
> etc.  Also, see if there is any genkernel option to get some debugging
> info out of the initrd, I know using dracut you can get breakpoints
> during the process and see how its doing.


Tried dracut.  No change.

Added the kernel command line debug options (#3 in “Identifying your
problem area” in ‘man dracut’).  No change.

Feeling peevish, I made a file of random junk using dd if=/dev/random
of=initrd.img count=4096.  Then supplied that pile of junk as the initrd.
Again, no change.

Then I supplied a nonexistent file name (xxx.img) as the initrd.  This time
I got a complaint:

error: file ‘/xxx.img’ not found.

Press any key to continue...

So, it’s getting as far as wanting to read the initrd, and is smart enough
to tell whether the specified initrd actually exists on the specified boot
partition.  But it can’t actually be doing anything with the initrd, or it
would have objected to the random junk I fed it.

>From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_ramdisk#Implementation, it
appears that grub is in charge of loading both linux and the initrd into
memory, then handing execution over to linux along with a pointer to the
memory location of the initrd.

I’ve observed that that no booting output comes out of linux, nor any
complaints from linux about the nonsense contents I fed it from the random
initrd I built.  That suggests to me that grub has failed to load linux
and/or the initrd into memory, or that it's failed to hand execution
control to linux.

Next step:  learned how to run an interactive grub2 command shell. With
full debugging turned on, it looks like grub2 can load the kernel image,
and it looks like it loads the initrd as well.  At least there are no
complaints and the reported initrd size looks correct.

But when I issue the boot command, grub2 issues a handful of mallocs and
does a little token parsing, and then just stops...

So it appears that the boot problem arises right around the handoff from
grub2 to linux.  Don’t know whether grub2 or linux has failed.  I don’t
know how to get either one to tell me more.

John

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 7:50 AM John Blinka  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 3:12 AM William Kenworthy 
> wrote
>
>> >
>> Try https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelBoot ... I am not sure
>> genkernel uses that exact name but I did need to find the initramfs boot
>> log to diagnose a failure in a genkernel initramfs at one time.
>
>
Unfortunately, made no difference and provided no new information.
https://www.askapache.com/linux/linux-debugging/ might be too old to be
relevant any more, but tried almost everything it suggested to obtain
debugging output.  Not one byte of debug info appeared.  Going to try the
dracut approach suggested elsewhere.

John

>

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 3:12 AM William Kenworthy  wrote

> >
> Try https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelBoot ... I am not sure
> genkernel uses that exact name but I did need to find the initramfs boot
> log to diagnose a failure in a genkernel initramfs at one time.


That’s an intriguing link.  Exploring it now.

John

>
>

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 2:36 AM John Covici  wrote:

>
> I would look in the grub.cfg and give us exactly what is in the stanza
> you are using, including where it thinks the root file system is,
> etc.  Also, see if there is any genkernel option to get some debugging
> info out of the initrd, I know using dracut you can get breakpoints
> during the process and see how its doing.


Here’s what I see when pressing “e” just before the system attempts to boot:

setparams ‘Gentoo GNU/Linux’

load_video
if [ “x$grub_platform” = xefi ]; then
set gfxpayload=keep
fi
insmod gzio
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
set root=‘hd0,gpt2’
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
  search —no-floppy —fs-uuid —set=root —hint-bios=hd0,gpt2
—hint-baremetal=ahci0, got2 5C75-30A0
else
  search —no-floppy —fs-uuid —set=root 5C75-30A0
fi
echo‘Loading Linux 5.10.27-gentoo-x86_64 ...’
linux /vmlinuz-5.10.27-gentoo-x86_64
root=UUID=0df096ca-4dc8-4325-9296-7b0ddb67f044 ro loglevel=4 nomodeset
echo‘Loading initial ramdisk ...’
initrd/early_ucode.cpio
/initramfs-5.10.27-gentoo-x86_64.img

I have checked the uuid and filenames - they are correct.  (hd0,gpt2) makes
sense.  There’s only 1 disk connected, it uses gpt, and the second
partition is a fat boot partition with the above uuid.  The named files
exist on that partition.

I don’t see anything in ‘man genkernel’ that looks like a way to get debug
info out of an initrd/initramfs.  Looks like there’s a way to turn it off,
so perhaps it’s on by default?

John

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 9:12 PM Jack 
wrote:

> Given  you say the UUID is for the boot partition, then both the linux and
> initrd should just have the name of the kernel and initrd files (without
> leading "/boot",) which sounds like what  you've got.  I'd next wonder if
> something is missing from the kernel/initrd combination, such as a kernel
> module necessary for some early part of the boot process or a file system
> (per Dale's suggestion.)  Assuming that you ran genkernel after booting a
> live image and chrooting into the new system, then we know the hardware can
> boot a good kernel/image combo.  Mainly I'm  just thinking out loud here,
> trying to coax someone's little gray cells into action.
>
In my early linux days, I thought it would be clever to include kernel
support for my root filesystem in a module.  Whose code resided on the root
filesystem...  That didn’t work, of course, but at least the kernel started
to boot and threw out an error message.  Here, I just get complete
silence.  So, I doubt that file system support is an issue.

John

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 9:10 PM Dale  wrote:

>
> I hate these init thingys and will admit I know little about the
> things.  I had a thought tho, could it be that the file system needed to
> read the init thingy isn't included somehow or in the kernel maybe?  If
> it is pointing to the right place, sounds like it is to me, then it has
> to be a read problem I'd think.


All the uefi stuff is on a fat filesystem.  I would think that something
that fundamental (and universally supported) is embedded in the bios.  The
grub bootloader itself is on that fat filesystem, and it must have loaded
or else I wouldn’t have access to the grub edit facility.  So I think I’m
ok on file system support.



>
> I haven't ever had to use the edit menu on grub2 that I remember.  It
> might be worth mentioning that it may have tab completion.  That would
> certainly remove a typo if it can complete the kernel or init thingys
> file name on its own.  Just a thought.


Grub documentation says it does have tab completion.  But the file names,
uuids, and other things prone to typos that I referenced are generated by
grub, so typos are unlikely to be an issue.  And I’ve checked them
meticulously.  They look ok.

>
> Going back under my desk now.


Maybe I’d be less frustrated by this new mobo if I did the same! ;)

John

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 7:23 PM Jack 
wrote:

>
> I'd start by removing any "quiet" or "splash" from the kernel command
> line.You should be able to see them when you hit "e". I'm not sure
> if it will actually help, but it should be a start.


Thanks, but neither one appears.  My command line is

linux  /vmlinuz… root=UUID=… ro loglevel=4 nomodeset

Here I’ve replaced the full name of the kernel and the uuid of the boot
partition with ellipses because it’s too tedious to type.  I’ve scrutinized
the actual ones for typos and am convinced there are none.  Leaving out the
loglevel command doesn’t change the behavior at all.

John

>

[gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[John Blinka]

Hi, Gentooers,

New thread, next obstacle in booting new Asus mobo.

As the subject says, the boot hangs indefinitely.  Output to the screen is

  Booting a command list

Loading Linux 5.10.27-gentoo-x86_64 ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...

And there it stops forever.

The kernel is the latest stable gentoo-sources.  I normally do a custom
configuration, but in this instance built it with “genkernel all”, using
whatever config genkernel produces. I use grub (grub2), and installed the
kernel and initrd with “grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg”, as I
normally do.

Googling around shows that this problem tends to occur when grub can’t find
the initrd.

So  I looked at the grub boot script by pressing “e” just before the boot
starts to make sure that grub is looking in the right place for the kernel
and for the initrd.  I think it is, since deliberately misspelling either
file name with the grub editor causes error messages saying grub can’t find
what I told it to look for.  And those error messages do not occur with the
boot script that grub generated.

Normally, loading the initrd takes only a few seconds.

How does one debug this situation?

John

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 1:03 PM antlists  wrote:

> On 13/05/2021 00:51, John Blinka wrote:
> > And it appears your intuition is correct.  I left all the “secure boot”
> > options in the bios at their defaults except one.  I changed “OS Type”
> > from “Windows UEFI mode” to “Other OS”.  That was sufficient to boot
> > from my Sysrescue usb.
>
> One other little point of interest ... so does that mean
> non-windows-uefi, or does it mean bios legacy?
>
> That could be important information at some point, especially if you
> want to dual-boot.


Don’t know for sure.  Suspect it’s non-windows-uefi.  There’s a separate
option in the bios boot submenu called CSM (Compatibility Support Module).
Googling this suggests to me that this is the bios legacy switch.  I’ve
moved on to uefi exclusively, am beginning to get a grip on it, and will
not dual boot on this box.

John

>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 5:29 PM John Blinka  wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 1:35 PM Neil Bothwick  wrote:
>
>>
>> I'd be surprised to find that "Other OS" is a secure boot option, it
>> sounds like the option to run without secure boot.
>
>
> Perhaps.  That will be one of my experiments once I get things working.
>

And it appears your intuition is correct.  I left all the “secure boot”
options in the bios at their defaults except one.  I changed “OS Type” from
“Windows UEFI mode” to “Other OS”.  That was sufficient to boot from my
Sysrescue usb.

John

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 1:42 PM Walter Dnes  wrote:

> On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 01:10:56PM -0400, John Blinka wrote
>
> > but how does one add nomodeset to boot options, or edit boot options?
>
>   The default ISO USB action is to wait a few seconds and then boot the
> standard kernel.  Tap "any key" (e.g. spacebar) ***BEFORE THE WAIT TIMES
> OUT*** and then type in the line...
>
> gentoo nomodeset
>
> ...followed by the {ENTER} key.  That should boot with the nomodeset
> option


Thanks - works like a charm! (And I learned something new.)

John

>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 1:35 PM Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> On Wed, 12 May 2021 13:10:56 -0400, John Blinka wrote:
>
> > Not that I am fluent in this stuff
> > (understatement!) but how does one add nomodeset to boot options, or
> > edit boot options?
>
> Press e at the boot menu, that's the usual key to edit the boot options.
> You may have to press a key, usually space, to bring up the boot menu,
> depending on the ISO you are using.


Cool!  I’ve been linuxing for decades and never had the need to do this.
Until now.  Sysrescue booted (has probably been booting all along) *and*
with nomodeset applied I can now see what it’s doing on the monitor.  Now
that I’m on terra firma, hope it will be clear sailing from here.
 (Apologies for the clash of metaphors!).

>
>
> I'd be surprised to find that "Other OS" is a secure boot option, it
> sounds like the option to run without secure boot.


Perhaps.  That will be one of my experiments once I get things working.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 9:01 AM Mike Kaliman  wrote:

> I think I had used the Gentoo live USB originally, although I've the
> gparted live USB as well. Sysrescue ought to work but I'm wondering if
> there's an issue with a missing GPU driver or something. Granted, id be
> surprised that both sysrescue and the Ubuntu server USBs are missing
> drivers.
>
> What is your graphics setup? Integrated? Dedicated?
>

Integrated intel.

John

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 10:22 AM Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> On Wed, 12 May 2021 08:56:16 -0400, John Blinka wrote:
>
> >
> > I’ve tried usb sticks with both Sysrescue and Ubuntu server to boot this
> > thing.  It appears to attempt to boot each one, but then the screen goes
> > blank after 1-2 seconds, at which point I can’t tell what’s going on.
>
> This could possibly be KMS kicking in, try adding nomodeset to the boot
> options. While you're editing the boot options, you may as well remove
> any quiet or splash options too, so you can better see what is going on.


KMS… had to Google that. Not that I am fluent in this stuff
(understatement!) but how does one add nomodeset to boot options, or edit
boot options?  The world I’m living in consists of downloading a bootable
Linux iso image,  dd’ing it to a usb stick, then trying to boot my
recalcitrant Asus board from that.  What you’re suggesting sounds to me
like rolling my own Gentoo usb boot stick.  Is
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Install_Gentoo_on_a_bootable_USB_stick is the
place to go for that?

John

Re: [gentoo-user] sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 12, 2021 at 9:04 AM Wols Lists  wrote:

> On 12/05/21 13:43, John Blinka
> >
> So what I guess *might* be happening is that there is a signed
> boot-loader on the "other OS" on CD, but because the gentoo boot loader
> is not signed, that's why it's not working ...
>
> So somehow you need to get your "other linux" booted again, get back
> into gentoo, and install a signed binary boot loader. Pain in the Arse!!!
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>
> “Other OS” is a secure boot setting in the Asus bios. There has never been
*any* actual os running on this board, since I have never gotten anything
to boot.

I suspected that sysrescue and Gentoo do not have signed boot loaders on
their isos (does Gentoo even have isos? Haven’t used anything but sysrescue
in ages…).  That’s why I downloaded and tried the current Ubuntu server
iso, believing that it would have a signed boot loader.  That didn’t boot.

John

[gentoo-user] Re: sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

Thanks for the suggestions for solving my booting problem, which admittedly
is not particularly Gentoo related at this stage in the installation
process.

I’ve tried usb sticks with both Sysrescue and Ubuntu server to boot this
thing.  It appears to attempt to boot each one, but then the screen goes
blank after 1-2 seconds, at which point I can’t tell what’s going on.  Each
usb stick boots my other machines normally, and the screen works normally
when used as a display for my other Gentoo machines.

Your suggestions imply that there’s nothing especially magical about
putting Linux on Asus mobos and that I’m setting up the bios correctly.  So
I’m coming to the conclusion that this mobo may not be working as
intended.  Back it goes!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 8:57 PM Mike Kaliman  wrote:

> I have an Asus TUF Gaming X570 and have the secure boot OS type as "Other
> OS". I've been using rEFInd to dual boot with Windows.
>

So, this suggests that “Other OS” was sufficient to allow you to boot some
kind of Linux distro, which you then used to install Gentoo.  I take that
as proof of concept that what I’ve tried *ought* to work.

Thanks for that reassurance!

John

>

Re: [gentoo-user] sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 6:49 PM  wrote:


>
> Try to  watch this clip it might help.
>
>
> https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk039uHXT9NuDloVx1Rvp0Mw3kBzEXg:1620773038736=asus+board+%22b560m%22+turn+off+secure+boot=X=2ahUKEwjSsfCJ2sLwAhXCpJ4KHdr6Bz4Q5t4CMAx6BAgeEA0=1263=660#kpvalbx=_ygibYJexK87E-gT-gLaYDw55
>
> Thanks for the additional resources.  Unfortunately, I’ve already tried
what these posts suggest, but without success.

John

[gentoo-user] sysrescue+new asus mobo+secure boot=0

[John Blinka]

Hello, Gentooers,

I just acquired a new Asus board (b560m tuf gaming+wifi) to replace a
failed gigabyte board on my main Gentoo machine.  Assembly went well, it
powered up flawlessly first time, it recognized all the hardware... and
then nothing.   Cannot get it to boot.

On all my other machines, there’s a bios setting that allows me to turn off
secure boot, which allows me to boot Sysrescue from usb, or Gentoo from a
hard drive.

Not so (as far as I can tell) on this mobo/bios.  There’s the usual bios
boot menu and a secure boot submenu.  However, the secure boot submenu only
allows me to select between Windows UEFI (with, presumably, secure boot
enabled) and “other OS”.  I have no clue what “other OS” implies about
secure boot.  It also offers the ability to accept the standard
Microsoft-supplied secure boot keys, or to change or delete them.  There
are a few claims on the web that clearing the PK key (and only that key) or
clearing all of the keys is the way to turn off secure boot.   I’ve tried
all the combinations; none of them allow me to boot.

The farthest I’ve gotten is to display the Sysrescue usb boot choices.
Selecting any of them seems to (briefly, for a second) start a boot and
then the screen goes blank.  Nothing after that.

I haven’t found any mention on the web that Asus boards are particularly
linux hostile, nor much discussion implying that turning off secure boot is
particularly tricky.  Most of what I’ve seen is, say, Ubuntu oriented.  I
gather that they have gone through the process of getting their secure boot
keys authorized by Microsoft.

Anybody have success getting Gentoo to boot from a recent Asus mobo?

Thanks!

John Blinka

[gentoo-user] fcrontab -e: ERROR Could not init PAM account management (9)

[John Blinka]

Hello, Gentooers,

I have 3 amd64 Gentoo systems.  Somewhat different hardware, but all
running the same Gentoo profile, same world file, same /etc/portage.
All up to date, all using the same binpkgs for all installed hardware.
At least as far as I can tell. I don't have a robust mechanism for
enforcing consistency among the machines, but I try to maintain them
as identically as possible.  Little differences sneak in.

I've been using fcron for years, and I rarely need to touch it.
Recently I discovered that it works differently on the 3
machines.  Only for my personal user account "john", but not for root.

On 1 machine, fcrontab -e works as expected for "john".  On the other
2, it generates this error when invoked:
ERROR Could not init PAM account management (9): Authentication
service cannot retrieve authentication info

This message comes from inside fcrontab.  The source code indicates
that it occurs from a failure of a call to pam_acct_mgmt().  That's
the part of the pam interface which checks for a valid account.

The "john" account has no other pam issues.  It's the account I have
used for all normal activity for the 20+ years I've used Gentoo.  It
has the same /etc/passwd and /etc/group entries on all machines.
/etc/pamd.d is identical on all machines: content, timestamps, and
ownership included.  So, I'm at a loss for what to examine next.  I'm
thinking that atching what pam does on the working/nonworking machines
may provide some clues.

There's a pam_debug module that I assume is written to do just this.
But I find the man page confusing, and Google sheds more darkness than
light.

Can anyone explain how they debug pam problems?

Thanks,

John

Re: [RESOLVED] [gentoo-user] zfs repair needed (due to fingers being faster than brain)

[John Blinka]

To all who replied to my distress signal,

The repair turned out to be pretty painless.  In two ways:

First, getting quality advice from all of you sans the roasting I deserved
;), and

Second, gdisk fixed the gpt header and partition table easily (details
below).  After that, I rebooted, zfs recognized the disk, and then it
started a resilver automatically.  It was done a few minutes later, and now
everything’s back to normal.

Gdisk noted that both the main gpt header and main partition table were
damaged, but the backups were ok.  I bypassed gdisk’s offer to use either
the current gpt or to create a blank gpt, because I didn’t understand
exactly what “current” or “blank” meant.

Instead, I invoked the recovery & transformation menu with “r”.  Then I
used “b” to rebuild the damaged main gpt header with the good backup,
followed by “c” to restore the partition table from the good backup.  I
then printed the partition table.  It looked exactly like the partition
tables on the other disks of the same make and model in the zfs pool
(modulo what looked like a unique zfs partition name).  That made me
comfortable, so I wrote the changes to disk, rebooted, and found everything
back to normal after the resilver.

Appreciate all the help.  Thanks!

John

[gentoo-user] zfs repair needed (due to fingers being faster than brain)

[John Blinka]

HI, Gentooers!

So, I typed dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd, and despite
hitting ctrl-c quite quickly, zeroed out some portion of the initial
part of a disk.  Which did this to my zfs raidz3 array:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
zfs  DEGRADED 0 0 0
  raidz3-0   DEGRADED 0 0 0
ata-HGST_HUS724030ALE640_PK1234P8JJJVKP  ONLINE   0 0 0
ata-HGST_HUS724030ALE640_PK1234P8JJP3AP  ONLINE   0 0 0
ata-ST4000NM0033-9ZM170_Z1Z80P4C ONLINE   0 0 0
ata-ST4000NM0033-9ZM170_Z1ZAZ8F1 ONLINE   0 0 0
14296253848142792483 UNAVAIL  0 0
   0  was /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST4000NM0033-9ZM170_Z1ZAZDJ0-part1
ata-ST4000NM0033-9ZM170_Z1Z80KG0 ONLINE   0 0 0

Could have been worse.  I do have backups, and it is raid3, so all
I've injured is my pride, but I do want to fix things.I'd
appreciate some guidance before I attempt doing this - I have no
experience at it myself.

The steps I envision are

1) zpool offline zfs 14296253848142792483 (What's that number?)
2) do something to repair the damaged disk
3) zpool online zfs 

Right now, the device name for the damaged disk is /dev/sda.  Gdisk
says this about it:

Caution: invalid main GPT header, but valid backup; regenerating main header
from backup!

Warning: Invalid CRC on main header data; loaded backup partition table.
Warning! Main and backup partition tables differ! Use the 'c' and 'e' options
on the recovery & transformation menu to examine the two tables.

Warning! Main partition table CRC mismatch! Loaded backup partition table
instead of main partition table!

Warning! One or more CRCs don't match. You should repair the disk!
Main header: ERROR
Backup header: OK
Main partition table: ERROR
Backup partition table: OK

Partition table scan:
  MBR: not present
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: damaged

Found invalid MBR and corrupt GPT. What do you want to do? (Using the
GPT MAY permit recovery of GPT data.)
 1 - Use current GPT
 2 - Create blank GPT

Your answer: ( I haven't given one yet)

I'm not exactly sure what this is telling me.  But I'm guessing it
means that the main partition table is gone, but there's a good
backup.  In addition, some, but not all disk id info is gone:
1) /dev/disk/by-id still shows ata-ST4000NM0033-9ZM170_Z1ZAZDJ0 (the
damaged disk) but none of its former partitions
2) /dev/disk/by-partlabel shows entries for the undamaged disks in the
pool, but not the damaged one
3) /dev/disk/by-partuuid similar to /dev/disk/by-partlabel
4) /dev/disk/by-uuid does not show the damaged disk

This particular disk is from a batch of 4 I bought with the same make
and specification and very similar ids (/dev/disk/by-id).  Can I
repair this disk by copying something off one of those other disks
onto this one?  Is repair just repartitioning - as in the Gentoo
handbook?  Is it as simple as running gdisk and typing 1 to accept
gdisk's attempt at recovering the gpt?  Is running gdisk's recovery
and transformation facilities the way to go (the b option looks like
it's made for exactly this situation)?

Anybody experienced at this and willing to guide me?

Thanks,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: console size/display anomaly

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2020 at 11:39 AM Walter Dnes  wrote:

> i
>   The way I read it,  is to go into "Picture Wizard II" menu and
> select "Aspect Ratio" option "Just scan".  Hopefully this solves your
> problem.


Just had to go directly to “Aspect Ratio” and select “Just scan”.  Worked
like a charm!  Thank you so much for spotting this!  I’d been through the
“Picture Wizard II” menu many times without seeing anything that I thought
would be useful.  This makes a huge difference in usability!

John

>
>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: console size/display anomaly

[John Blinka]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 1:03 PM Grant Edwards 
wrote:

> On 2020-10-30, John Blinka  wrote:
>
> Some TVs don't provide a remedy. Others do, but it may be something
> pretty obscure. One of my LG TVs allows you to assign a "label" to
> each input. The labels are selected from a pre-defined list. If you
> select the "PC" label, it disables overscan. IIRC, this wasn't
> documented anywhere (I stumbled across the info in a home-theater
> forum). On my other LG, that doesn't work (there appears to be no way
> to eliminate overscan).


This beast is an LG 42 LS 5700.  Some documentation hints that PC
connections may not use overscan.  I’m using HDMI.  Haven’t seen any input
labeling facility, but then haven’t been on the lookout for it, either.
Potentially useful.

Thanks!

John

>

Re: [gentoo-user] console size/display anomaly

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 8:23 AM Walter Dnes  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 09:54:04AM -0400, John Blinka wrote
>
> > Any ideas?
>
>   The 1940's called... they want their overscan back.


Walter,

Thanks so much!  That explanation would account for what I’m seeing.  A
quick tour of the tv’s setup menu and a glance at the documentation didn’t
offer an obvious remedy, but your suggestions and knowing now to Google for
“overscan” will help immensely.

You have no idea (or maybe you do) how frustrating it was to set up Gentoo
on that box using that tv for a monitor.  Often couldn’t see critical parts
of what I was typing, nor the shell’s response.  And I’m not a good
typist...

Thanks again!

John

[gentoo-user] console size/display anomaly

[John Blinka]

Hi, everyone,

One of my gentoo boxes is mostly used headless, but now and then I connect
it to a display - a nearby large screen tv.  When I use the tv as a
console, the tv screen does not display the first few lines of text that
would normally appear, nor the last few, nor the leftmost few characters of
text, nor (if I type a really long line), the last few.  It’s like a
picture framed with a mat that cuts off the image uniformly on all sides:
top, bottom, left, right.

It does this with any gentoo box that I connect to it, but not when the
same box is running Windows.

It also does this when I run  X11.  If I make the mistake of maximizing a
window, then all the tools around the periphery of the window that normally
would allow me to resize the window are offscreen, making life with that
window difficult.

Everything else about the display is completely normal.

Clearly the tv and gentoo box are communicating something about the size of
the screen, but somehow misunderstanding each other.  Windows and the tv
don’t misunderstand each other.

There must be some place where I can intervene to correct this behavior.
But I have no idea where that place is, or what to Google for help.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] tuning desktop appearance for legibility

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 1:45 PM Caveman Al Toraboran <
toraboracave...@protonmail.com> wrote:

> ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
>
> On Thursday, September 3, 2020 6:50 PM, John Blinka 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi, Everyone,
>
>
>
> hello big dawg!
>
>
>
> quick point: imo the problem of gray texts on
>
> white backgrounds, or scrollbars or whatever, that
>
> you have, is not related to aging.  imo it's
>
> rather related to stupid web developers.  not even
>
> a mutant with infrared vision can use these
>
> websites.
>
>
>
>
>
> > 1) How  do you cope with this problem?
>
>
>
> i cope by these:
>
>
>
> - use pixel-based fonts for everything as much
>
>   as possible, specially for key apps like:
>
>   terminal, window manager and browser.
>
>
>
>   they become so much readable.  i use
>
>   "terminus-font" (and previously used "dina")
>
>   in my urxvt as well as my other apps as much
>
>   as i can.
>
>
>
>   i notice one of the major problems with
>
>   fonts is actually not our eyes, but in many
>
>   cases how fancy fonts blur.  i was
>
>   personally amazed by how i could use much
>
>   smaller fonts, while maintaining
>
>   readability, by simply switching to
>
>   pixel-based fonts, such as terminus.


I think I’m ok on fonts with my very hi-res monitor plus noto sans mono
font and white-on-black text wherever possible.  Discovered that during my
“tuning” efforts and like the look.  Used to use terminus but prefer my
current recipe.  Admittedly the clarity is probably only infinitesimally
different from terminus.


>
>
>
> - for my browser, i use custom user css for
>
>   different modes.  i also configured
>
>   shortcuts for my browser, so that i change
>
>   these user css files based on which ones
>
>   work best with the site.  generally, i have
>
>   "night.css" and "wiki.css" that i change by
>
>   keyboard shortcuts.  the "night.css" is very
>
>   generic and changes background/foreground
>
>   texts for pretty much 90% of sites properly.


Could you elaborate on this?  Don’t know css, but could pick it up.  I’m
assuming that web pages already contain css code to direct their
appearance.  So you apparently have some alternate appearance you prefer,
with your own alternate coding, and you somehow tell the browser to use
yours instead.  Am I anywhere close to getting the broad outlines of the
process correct?  If so, how does this intercept and substitute process
work?  (I see you provide a link below, but it doesn’t work here...)

>
>
>
>
>   this way, i am no longer bound by bad colors
>
>   chosen by web designers.
>
>
>
> - i use i3 as window manager, with lots of
>
>   shortcuts.  i also use qutebrowser (a
>
>   browser with good vim shortcuts).
>
>
>
>   this way, throughout the day, i rarely end
>
>   up needing to use the mouse to do things.  i
>
>   only use the mouse for ultra quirky websites
>
>   with fancy javascript links that are not
>
>   clickable by qutebrowser's shortcuts.


I cut my teeth on vi on 4.2 bsd on a vax.  That actually sounds appealing.

>
>
>   so thanks to using keyboard shortcuts, a
>
>   website can have thin gray scrollbar on a
>
>   gray background and i don't care.  because i
>
>   scroll by shortcuts, not by bars.  in fact,
>
>   my qutebrowser's interface has scrollbars
>
>   disabled altogether to use pixels, which i
>
>   paid dear money for, for real use.
>
>
>
>
>
> > 2) Is there an xfce theme and icon package you
>
> > recommend?  Or maybe something other than xfce?
>
> > I like xfce, and have never been attracted to
>
> > integrated desktops like kde and gnome, but if
>
> > they’ve got a credible solution, I’m willing to
>
> > try.
>
>
>
> i would suggest try keyboard-based window
>
> managers.  my 1st suggestion is i3.  it's actually
>
> perfectly usable for all applications.  it's
>
> tiling-based, but also has floating functionality,
>
> and does a fine job eliminating need of clicking
>
> around on tiny things.
>
>
>
> > 3) Are there lower level ways of tweaking my
>
> > current desktop?  For example, changing colors
>
> > in the 2 examples I gave above from black on
>
> > dark gray to black on white?  Could that be done
>
> > with a little judicious editing of color
>
> > settings somewhere, or adjusting colors on an
>
> > icon?  I don’t know how desktop appearances are
>
> > programmed, so I don’t know where on the
>
> > spectrum of trivial->apocalyptic this lies.
>
>
>
> user style sheets.  maybe have a look here
>
> (i also talked about it above):
>
> https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/css


Not promising.  The page doesn’t load except for a rotating colorwheel in
the center followed by a 504 gateway timeout.  Will try again later.

Thanks - lots of stuff to try.

John

[gentoo-user] tuning desktop appearance for legibility

[John Blinka]

Hi, Everyone,

As I have gotten older, reading what’s on my computer screen has become
more challenging.  I’ve adjusted with a big, high resolution monitor,
bigger fonts, better fonts, and ophthalmologists.  All helpful steps.

Recently, I’ve been playing with different desktop appearance options.  I
run xfce, and choose these appearance options in Settings->Appearance.  I
think I’ve explored everything relevant in /usr/portage/x11-themes but not
sure because it’s not clear to me what the various packages do.

I’ve tried a number of themes and icon packages.  All of them have
significant problems.  In some combos, I lose functionality.  (E.g.,  the
little up-down arrows at the top and bottom of scrollbars that allow you to
step up and down disappear on many combinations.)

The BlackMATE theme and Adwaita icon set are the most useful I’ve found.
But not without problems.

Today I was using Gnucash, and the BlackMATE/Adwaita combination presented
me with dark gray backgrounds on which to type black numbers.  Not the
clearest color combination.

Another example:   black window scroll bars on dark gray backgrounds.
Challenging to see.

There are other issues, such as websites that like to present medium gray
text on light gray backgrounds (sorry, can’t provide a specific example
right now).  Firefox, in Preferences->Fonts and Colors->Colors, has some
limited ability to override website color schemes with other colors, but
that hasn’t worked well for me in general, because it often gives many
websites a bizarre appearance.

I’m guessing this group has a number of folks who’ve encountered similar
problems.  I have several questions for you.

1) How  do you cope with this problem?

2) Is there an xfce theme and icon package you recommend?  Or maybe
something other than xfce?  I like xfce, and have never been attracted to
integrated desktops like kde and gnome, but if they’ve got a credible
solution, I’m willing to try.

3) Are there lower level ways of tweaking my current desktop?  For example,
changing colors in the 2 examples I gave above from black on dark gray to
black on white?  Could that be done with a little judicious editing of
color settings somewhere, or adjusting colors on an icon?  I don’t know how
desktop appearances are programmed, so I don’t know where on the spectrum
of trivial->apocalyptic this lies.

Thanks for your suggestions!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Joining PDF files together.

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 9:31 AM Alan Mackenzie  wrote:

> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> I've just scanned in a two-page document using sane, and it's given me
> as output two separate files.  I would like to join these together into
> a single document.
>
> Would somebody please suggest to me an appropriate package to do this
> with.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Other than that, Gentoo just keeps working for me, so I've not much to
> say on this list.  ;-)
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
> app-text/pdftk

pdftk page-1.pdf page-2.pdf cat output both.pdf

Lots of other useful tricks it can do with pdf files.

hth -

John Blinka

[gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [gentoo-user] !!! section ‘local’ in repos.conf has name different from ...

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 2:36 PM Alexey Mishustin  wrote:

>
> Aren't /usr/local/portage and /usr/local/portage/steam-overlay really
> intertwined? What if you move the 'local' overlay to, say,
> /usr/local/portage/local ? (And, sure, edit the corresponding info in
> the configuration files).
>
> --
> Regards,
> Alex
>
> Thanks, Alex, your suggestion worked.  And better than that, helped me
understand how I broke my 3rd installation by misreading and misapplying
the steam overlay installation guide.  It’s a mystery to me why my
misintallation ever worked on the first 2 boxes, but I’ll leave it
unexplored.

John

[gentoo-user] !!! section ‘local’ in repos.conf has name different from ...

[John Blinka]

Hi, everyone,

I’m trying to install steam-overlay using https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Steam

I have 3 boxes on which I try to maintain gentoo setups as identical as
possible.  The steam install has gone smoothly on 2 boxes, but is failing
on the 3rd.

When I get to this steam installation step on the 3rd box:
# emaint sync —repo steam-overlay

I get the error
!!! Section ‘local’ in repos.conf has name different from repository
‘steam-overlay’ set inside repository
which prevents me from syncing and installing steam on this machine.

I’m interpreting this as the two repositories (local and steam-overlay)
somehow knowing about each other and somehow getting their configurations
intertwined.

My repos.conf directory on this 3rd machine is identical to the other 2
machines (which don’t exhibit this error).

.../repos.conf/local.conf maintains a local overlay in /usr/local/portage
for a handful of personal packages/ebuilds.

 .../repos.conf/steam-overlay.conf maintains its overlay in
/usr/local/portage/steam-overlay.

Neither of these two files contain the other overlay’s name, i.e.,
local.conf doesn’t refer to steam-overlay nor does steam-overlay.conf refer
to local. The two files point to different storage locations for their
respective repositories.

So I don’t understand how these two repositories know of each other’s
existence.  Or maybe I don’t understand the error message.

Google doesn’t report many instances of this error, and following up with
them hasn’t produced a solution.

Any ideas about what’s happening?

Thanks,

John

Re: [gentoo-user] per package parallel build

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2019 at 3:46 PM Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Dec 2019 10:43:36 -0500, John Blinka wrote:
>
> > > > Couldn't you just have a script that "emerge --update"s each
> > > > package in sequence? If the package isn't due for update nothing
> > > > will happen. And then you could follow that with an "emerge world"
> > > > knowing that your hogs are already done.
> > >
> > > Sometimes the packages are rebuilt without an update, especially if
> > > you use --changed-use or --changed-deps, so it's not quite that
> > > simple.
> >
> >
> > But still pretty simple.  I’ve just used the “build in sequence” idea
> > for an update that forced a libreoffice rebuild.  It first upgraded a
> > few of libreoffice’s dependencies in parallel, and then rebuilt
> > libreoffice by itself afterwards. A subsequent emerge @world upgraded a
> > bunch of minor kde stuff.  I like this idea - seems to isolate the
> > “hogs” so they build one at a time, and it does so without any
> > intervention on my part.  Thanks!
>
> But if you emerge --update libreoffice before the package that is forcing
> the rebuild, why would libreoffice rebuild? I would expect it to only
> rebuild libreoffice after the dependency had been changed.


That’s exactly what happened.  I issued an emerge -DuNv —changed-deps
libreoffice first.  That had the effect of 1) first upgrading several
libreoffice dependencies, and 2) subsequently rebuilding libreoffice once
the dependencies changed.  I’m guessing emerge is smart enough to trigger
both activities and sequence them appropriately.  Operative word is guess -
I don’t pretend to understand the inner workings.

>
> I'm not saying out wouldn't work some of the time, but I can see
> situations where it wouldn't. Whereas
>
> emerge --opts @world --exclude memory-hogs...
> emerge --opts --jobs 1 @world
>
> should always isolate them.


Agreed that this technique should always work.  And it has the advantage of
fewer invocations of emerge.  But at the cost, I suspect, of serializing
the building of any memory hog dependencies that were excluded from
consideration by the first invocation of emerge.

What situations do you see as not working?

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] per package parallel build

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Nov 30, 2019 at 5:35 PM Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 16:47:35 +, Wols Lists wrote:
>
> > > There's no need to mess around adding and removing masks, just use
> > > the -
> > > - exclude option.
> > >
> > > Yep!  For some reason, that option doesn’t always occur to me, but
> > > that’s clearly a simpler way to do it.  Thanks for reminding me!
> > >
> > Couldn't you just have a script that "emerge --update"s each package in
> > sequence? If the package isn't due for update nothing will happen. And
> > then you could follow that with an "emerge world" knowing that your hogs
> > are already done.
>
> Sometimes the packages are rebuilt without an update, especially if you
> use --changed-use or --changed-deps, so it's not quite that simple.


But still pretty simple.  I’ve just used the “build in sequence” idea for
an update that forced a libreoffice rebuild.  It first upgraded a few of
libreoffice’s dependencies in parallel, and then rebuilt libreoffice by
itself afterwards. A subsequent emerge @world upgraded a bunch of minor kde
stuff.  I like this idea - seems to isolate the “hogs” so they build one at
a time, and it does so without any intervention on my part.  Thanks!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] per package parallel build

[John Blinka]

There's no need to mess around adding and removing masks, just use the - -
exclude option.

Yep!  For some reason, that option doesn’t always occur to me, but that’s
clearly a simpler way to do it.  Thanks for reminding me!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] per package parallel build

[John Blinka]

>
> I agree that it would be nice if emerge could do that automatically,
> although I have no clue how to do that or even if it can be done at
> all.  Back when I had less memory, I could let FF, LOo or another
> package run at full speed but only if it was only one of those packages
> at a time.  Thing is, on occasion two or more of those updates would hit
> and due to the long compile times, end up compiling at the same time.
> Do you think there is a way for the devs to set up a method to tell
> emerge not to emerge certain packages at the same time?  In other words,
> if Firefox is emerging, LOo is held until it is done or vice versa.
> Maybe even have it so others can be listed.  The list of large packages
> are likely small but they can have a huge impact on systems with less
> memory.
>
> You think that a feature worth asking the devs about?  Maybe they can
> figure out a way to implement that??


There already is a mechanism you can use, but it’s not the automatic type
that you (and, admittedly I) would like.

I have 3 old 2 core machines, and I use distcc heavily to reduce emerge
times.  The “fastest” (not really) and best equipped has 16 gb memory.  I
do updates on this machine (with distcc help from the others) and
distribute packages to the rest.  After a lot of experimenting, I find that
MAKEOPTS=“-j13 -l5” works the best on this fastest machine.  That setting
allows it to attempt a workload that it alone doesn’t have the resources to
accomplish, but successfully distributes to the other machines.  I use
firefox, chromium, and libreoffice.  Occasionally portage wants to upgrade
more than one of these at a time, which I discover by running emerge
—pretend.  On those occasions,  I’ve learned that I run out of resources
and builds fail.  So I just temporarily mask all but one of those updates,
do the upgrade, unmask one of the masked updates, do another upgrade, and
so on.  Works well for me.  No builds crash, essentially no swap gets used,
and I have substantially accelerated compile and ebuild times.

The tools exist to do what you want to do.  If you were so inclined, you
might even contemplate writing a script to automate what I just described.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Not enough RAM for dev-qt/qtwebengine build

[John Blinka]

>
> I can't really help with the problem, but I've built the same package
> recently with just 4GB of RAM. (It takes a long time.) So most likely
> it's something in your portage settings that's causing this.
>
> - Lasse


Agreed.  I’ve built it recently on 16GB of RAM.  My MAKEOPTS is -j13 -l5 to
allow good distribution of effort across 2 other machines with distcc.
Only about 7-8 GB appears to be actively used on the machine running the
emerge.

John

[gentoo-user] mariadb confused about expire_logs_days

[John Blinka]

.

Hello everyone,

I upgraded to mariadb-10.2.22-r1 from mariadb-10.1.38-r1 about 3 weeks
ago.  Just today I've discovered that the log files
(/var/lib/mysql/mariadb-bin.XX) have been accumulating since that
time.  I have no use for all of these log files, so years ago I set
expire_logs_files = 1 in my.cnf to keep just the most recent one.
This has worked well until the upgrade.  This upgrade also introduced
a new way of expressing the /etc/mysql/my.cnf file.  It now follows
Gentoo practice of pointing to a directory (/etc/mysql/mariadb.d)
which contains multiple files that are concatenated to produce the
my.cnf file that is handed to mariadb. One of these files
(/etc/mysql/mariadb.d/logs) contains
[mysql]
expire_logs_days= 1

Clearly, this is being ignored, since I now have 3 weeks of
accumulated log files instead of just the latest one.  When I
attempted to log into the mariadb server to examine the values of the
global variables, the login failed with the message

mysql: unknown variable 'expire_logs_days=1'

I then commented out the line "expire_logs_days= 1" in the
file /etc/mysql/mariadb.d/logs.  This allowed me to log into the
mariadb server without the error message to issue the SHOW VARIABLES;
command, which revealed that expire_logs_days was set to the 0
default.

So clearly mariadb seems to think that expire_logs_days is still a
legitimate variable.  It looks like something is interpreting the line
"expire_logs_days   = 1" as just a variable name instead of name =
value.

Anybody else experience this?  Any suggested solutions?  I haven't
found anything on Google or bugs.gentoo.org.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] eselect python cleanup

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 5:04 PM allan gottlieb  wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 24 2019, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 18:08:09 -0400, Jack wrote:
> >
> >> > Am I correct in believing that I should now execute
> >> >eselect python cleanup
> >
> >> I just ran into the same problem, and that solution seems to have
> >> worked for me.
> >
> > It worked for me, but only after I ran it twice. This was reproducible on
> > several systems.
>
> It worked for me running only once on each of two systems.
> By worked I mean the error msg
>
> python-exec: Invalid impl in /etc/python-exec/python-exec.conf:
> python3.4
>
> stopped appearing on my "emerge update world" commands.  Perhaps you Neil
> tested further for failure and Jack and I should as well.
>
> allan
>
> I found that each invocation of “eselect python cleanup” cleaned up only
one instance of an uninstalled python interpreter.  I had 2 such instances
on my boxes, so 2 invocations did the trick for me.  Cleanup doesn’t
(apparently) clean everything up.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Any gotchas with gcc 8.2

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 8:46 PM Walter Dnes  wrote:

>   I just did an emerge update after 6 or 7 weeks.  I manually excluded
> GCC 8.2.0 pending word if there are any problems.  How is 8.2.0 working
> for people?


No issues here, including kernel rebuild.

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] Do I need to do anything if a package masked by my profile?

[John Blinka]

>
>> You shouldn't have any of these packages installed now, they should have
>> been depcleaned after xorg-proto was installed. If depclean doesn't
>> remove them, they still be required by a package in an overlay, that
>> happened to me.
>>
>> emerge -cpv packagename
>>
>> should tell you why each package is still there.
>
>
In my case, depclean didn’t remove them after xorg-proto was installed, no
other package depended on them, and there were no portage anomalies like
being accidentally included in my world file.  I had to remove them
explicitly by hand.  Don’t know what that’s all about, but everything still
works.

John Blinka

>
>>

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge colors and light background

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 10:36 AM, Grant Edwards
 wrote:
> On 2018-04-19, Klaus Ethgen  wrote:
>
>> I use light background and many colors of emerge and other tools are
>> simple unreadable (like light green).
>
> Yep, it's awful.  People have been complaining about it for years and
> years.
>
>> I searched how to adapt them to my background but did not success.
>
> The short answer is: you can't.  The devs use black backgrounds and
> you're supposed to also.
>
>> I already know about color.map but this just allows to tune some
>> colors and not all (at least the ones that are documented in the man
>> page).
>>
>> So, is there any way (without using --nocolor) to use color set that is
>> more readable?
>
> Nope.
>

My sympathies to the OP.  I fought against dark terminal backgrounds
for years (paper is white and ink is black, right?), tweaked all the
colors through every mechanism I knew of, and never did arrive at a
satisfactory result.  I finally decided to waste my time in other,
less frustrating pursuits, and turned all my backgrounds black.  Now
everything works perfectly, and I'm used to dark backgrounds.  Problem
solved.  You, of course, are free to prefer light backgrounds, but in
my experience Grant's answers ("You can't" and "Nope") sum up the
situation so precisely and succinctly that I just had to laugh
(thanks!).

John

Re: [gentoo-user] webkit-gtk build failure and masking confusion

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 10:40 AM allan gottlieb  wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 18 2018, Mick wrote:
>
> > On Sunday, 18 February 2018 01:09:36 GMT allan gottlieb wrote:
>
> Specifically excluding the buggy (old) version of webkit-gtk,
> portage wants me to merge a newish (testing) version of gnucash that
> uses a solid new version of webkit-gtk.  I have the new version of
> webkit-gtk, but really want to delay installing the testing gnucash.


Looks like gnucash-2.7.4-r1 is now in the stable branch of portage despite
gnucash declaring “This release is UNSTABLE and SHOULD NOT BE USED in
production” (their caps, not mine).  I’ve masked it and reverted to
icu58.2-r1 by masking icu-60.2.  The older icu allows
webkit-gtk-2.4.11-r200 to build, and gives me a version of gnucash which
I’ve used for a long time and trust.  Not going to upgrade irreversibly to
a version which the authors themselves don’t trust.  My 2 cents.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] webkit-gtk-2.4.11-r200::gentoo failed (compile phase)

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 2:56 PM Floyd Anderson  wrote:

I had the same problem, and, after a huge amount of experimenting, found a
solution that works for me.  I masked =dev-libs/icu-60.2 and then did
emerge -DuNv @world.  On my systems, that downgrades to icu-58.2-r1, which
is compatible with webkit-2.4.11-r200

John

Re: [gentoo-user] webkit-gtk build failure and masking confusion

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 3:38 PM, Neil Bothwick  wrote:
>
> They don't. Note the slot specification at the end, there is only one
> version in slot 2, the one that gives all the trouble.

Thanks for pointing that out.

>
> Your best bet is to keyword gnucash-2.7.4, which does use the up to date
> webkit-gtk.

Tried that and gnucash-2.7.4 (and dependencies) do build without any
troubles.  But https://gnucash.org/news.phtml declares that all 2.7.*
versions are unstable, so I
prefer not to risk it.I have finally managed to get
webkit-gtk-2.4,11,r200 to build by unsetting a number of use flags and
building strictly in serial
mode, so problem is solved at the expense of substantially increased build time.

Appreciate your help.

John

[gentoo-user] webkit-gtk build failure and masking confusion

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

A recent update demanded that I rebuild webkit-gtk-2.4.11-r200.
Unfortunately I cannot get this package to rebuild.

In my experience, this particular version of webkit-gtk has always
been a very fragile build.  I've put way too much time into wrestling
with it and I'd like to get rid of it.  There's a newer version:
webkit-gtk-2.18.6, which builds with no problems.

The only package on my system that needs webkit-gtk is gnucash.   All
of the stable ebuilds for gnucash contain this line
>=net-libs/webkit-gtk-1.2:2
And all of the versions of webkit-gtk in portage satisfy this condition.

So, I ought to be able to use webkit-2.18.6, right?  But, I cannot get
portage to agree to use webkit-2.18.6.  It insists that this package
is masked..  And I cannot figure out how or why it is masked.

Nothing masks it in /etc/portage.

It's keyworded amd64, which is what I'm running.

I have followed through all the mask/unmask files in my profile
(default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop (stable)) and have found webkit-gtk
mentioned precisely twice: in
/usr/portage/profiles/arch/base/package.use.mask and
/usr/portage/profiles/arch/amd64/package.use.mask.  The comments in
these files suggest that the use flag "jit" is masked in general, but
allowed in amd64.

So there's nothing I know to look for that seems to prevent any
available version of webkit-gtk from being considered.  Yet if I mask
off webkit-gtk-2.4.11-r200 in /etc/portage/package.mask and attempt to
build gnucash, I get his error message:

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy ">=net-libs/webkit-gtk-1.2:2" have
been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- net-libs/webkit-gtk-2.4.11-r200::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)

And that's on a system that contains webkit-gtk-2.18.6.

Can anyone explain to me why portage won't use webkit-gtk-2.18.6 to
satisfy gnucash's needs?

Thanks,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] How to resume 'emerge -e @world' after grub fails?

[John Blinka]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Grant Edwards
<grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How do I skip grub and continue?
>

emerge --skipfirst --resume

I had to do that several times in my 17.0 upgrades.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure (solved)

[John Blinka]

Rich Freeman had the right clue.

Some time ago, after successfully installing zfs, I changed root's
umask to 0027.  This had the effect of changing the permissions on
/lib/modules/X.Y.Z-gentoo to drwxr-x--- on a subsequent kernel
upgrade.  This prevents emerge (once it switches to user:group
portage:portage) from being able to explore the contents of
/lib/modules/X.Y.Z-gentoo.  Unfortunately for me, spl's configure
script locates the current kernel source by following the
/lib/modules/X.Y.Z-gentoo/build soft link.  And it couldn't do that
with the overly restrictive umask.  The solution was simple: eliminate
the 0027 umask for root, and chmod o+rx /lib/modules/X.Y.Z-gentoo.

Thanks for all the suggestions.  They all helped.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Changing dependencies without upping version ??

[John Blinka]

>
>
> Is this an officially approved technique??  it is DIRTY.


I imagine that it is sanctioned, otherwise why would there be a
--changed-deps flag to emerge?  Does seem dirty.  Glad you asked the
question.  Would love to learn why this is allowed.  In my experience, it
happens quite often.

John Blinka

>

Re: [gentoo-user] initial compile time

[John Blinka]

On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 7:41 AM,  <mad.scientist.at.la...@tutanota.com> wrote:
> Ok, i'm starting to understand the install instructions, a steeper curve
> than i expected but still way easier than LFS.
> So, on a dual core athlon II 6000 (two cores, 3ghz)  roughly how long will
> stage3 take to compile, roughly?

With emphasis on the "roughly", I seem to recall that it took me
several days to compile everything I wanted on initial system
installation on machines of similar capabilities.  But that includes
significantly more than stage3, with long build time stuff like
firefox, chromium, and libreoffice accounting for at least half that
time.

>
> next month i'll be setting up a compiler farm with 3 other, similiar
> machines which should help, will also be upgrading cpus to 4 or 6 core, and
> have one machine that can upgraded for phenom and one i can update to
> opteron, according to the board makers (it just needs a different bios).
>
> If i had the supporting bios any of my machines could upgrade to nearly any
> AMD socket 2 or 3+ chip

You seem to want to see how fast you can go, and that's certainly an
interesting exercise.  I've been there, too, but over the years have
gradually retreated to a very non-aggressive compile setup.  I've used
distcc, made use of multiple cores, parallel make, etc. but have
abandoned them all over time.  It is quite possible to slow things
down with improper setup, or with a local network with limited
capabilities, so it takes a little time and experimentation to tune
things properly.  And it's possible to speed things up substantially,
too.  However, in my experience, speedups obtained this way can and do
expose bugs in the build process.  For me the personal keyboard time I
invested in fixing things that broke in parallel wasn't worth the
speedups I achieved.  I, too, come from the punchcard and paper tape
era, so even the very cheapest modern cpus run circles around the
multi-million $ parallel supercomputers I used to buy and use.  I now
prefer just starting an emerge, and letting it take its merry old
time.  Gentoo's gotten good enough over the years that this almost
invariably works.  I'm not criticizing your speedup plans - by all
means, have fun - but if you're just starting out in Gentoo, be aware
that these speedups aren't necessarily a slam-dunk.


John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 7:13 PM, John Blinka <john.bli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:54 PM, John Covici <cov...@ccs.covici.com> wrote:
>
>> What is your umask?   I had troubles like this when I had too
>> aggressive umask of I think 027 rather than 022.
>
> It is indeed 027, and I wondered whether that might have been what was
> behind the error, hence I tried chmod -R 777 the entire kernel tree.
> But maybe that mask is doing something nasty during the actual config
> step apart from the kernel tree.  I'll try backing off the umask.
> Thanks!
>
> John

Back at debugging the spl configuration failure after a hiatus.  Tried
a umask of 022.  No change in failed spl configuration.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 7:14 PM, John Blinka <john.bli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:51 PM, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, and in fact it is in the output when emerge fails:
>>  /var/tmp/portage/sys-kernel/spl-0.7.1/work/spl-0.7.1/config.log
>

Digging into config.log after a hiatus to attend to other demands of
life.  Comparing config.log output to the code in the corresponding
"configure" script was a little enlightening - at least it was clear
what the configure script was trying to do when it failed.   In
anticipation of throwing some echo statements into a modified script
to help debug further, I tried to see if the configure script could be
invoked using the command line arguments documented in config.log.  To
my surprise, when invoking configure that way, the script proceeded to
completion without any problems.  There's a clue.  Executing on the
command line as user root and group root leads to success, and
executing through portage as portage:portage (judging from the
ownership of files in
/var/tmp/portage/sys-kernel/spl-0.7.1/work/spl-0.7.1) leads to
failure.

Thanks for the hint. back to debugging.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:51 PM, Rich Freeman  wrote:
>
> Yes, and in fact it is in the output when emerge fails:
>  /var/tmp/portage/sys-kernel/spl-0.7.1/work/spl-0.7.1/config.log


Ah-ha!  I see it now. That['s valuable, and I'll take a closer look.  Thanks!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:54 PM, John Covici  wrote:

> What is your umask?   I had troubles like this when I had too
> aggressive umask of I think 027 rather than 022.

It is indeed 027, and I wondered whether that might have been what was
behind the error, hence I tried chmod -R 777 the entire kernel tree.
But maybe that mask is doing something nasty during the actual config
step apart from the kernel tree.  I'll try backing off the umask.
Thanks!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:04 PM, Rich Freeman  wrote:

First, I appreciate your thoughts and comments.

>
> I suspect your sources have gotten messed up in some way.  I've run
> into issues like this when I do something like build a kernel with an
> odd umask so that the portage user can't read the files it needs to
> build a module.  Your chmod should have fixed that but there could be
> something else going on.  It might just be that you didn't prepare the
> sources?

Same thought occurred to me, hence the chmod.  Not sure what "prepare
the sources" is all about; not a step I've ever used with kernels.
But see below.

>
> I actually do all my kernel builds in a tmpfs under /var/tmp these
> days which keeps my /usr/src/linux pristine.  (make O=/var/tmp/linux
> modules_install and so on)  It does involve more building during
> upgrades but I know everything is clean, and I prefer no-issues to
> faster-builds.

I have the same preference.  Will have to take a look at following
your example..

>
> In theory that isn't essential, but I would definitely just wipe out
> /usr/src/linux and unpack clean kernel sources.  If you're using the
> gentoo-sources package you can just rm -rf the symlink and the actual
> tree, and just re-emerge the package and it will set up both.  If
> you're using git then I'd probably wipe it and re-pull as I'm not sure
> if a clean/reset will actually take care of all the permissions.
>
> Then you need to run at least make oldconfig and make modules_prepare
> before you can build a module against it.  Doing a full kernel build
> is also fine.

I think I've done that (multiple times over the past 8 months).  When
a new kernel shows up as stable in the tree, I do (as root)

emerge -DuNv gentoo-sources
set up symlink
cd into usr/src/linux
zcat /proc/config.gz > .config
make olddefconfig
make menu_config (as a sanity check)
make
make modules_install
make install

I don't know what could have messed up the kernel tree other than
whatever magic happens behind the scenes in the various make commands.

Just now tried a make modules_prepare followed by an emerge -1 spl.  Same error.

Started again from scratch.  Moved the kernel tree I've been working
with (building kernel, modules, etc.) aside, then re-emerged
gentoo-sources.  Kernel tree should be pristine now, right?  Then
copied the config from my running kernel (same version 4.12.5) into
/usr/src/linux.  Then did a make modules_prepare.  Finally did an
emerge -1 spl.  Same error as always.  So, as attractive as the idea
of a messed up kernel tree is to me, I don't think that's the source
of the problem.

I think it would be informative if I could somehow see exactly what
commands are being run when the error occurs.  Is there a way of doing
that?

John

[gentoo-user] zfs emerge failure

[John Blinka]

Hi, Gentoo,

Hope someone can shed some light on continuing emerge failures for zfs
since gnetoo-sources-4.4.39 and zfs-0.6.5.8.  I was able to install
that version of zfs with that kernel last November on one of my
machines, but have been unable to upgrade zfs since then, or to
install it in any newer kernel, or even to re-install the same version
on the same kernel.

Emerge fails consistently in the configuration phase for spl with the
following snippet in the log:

checking kernel source directory... /usr/src/linux
checking kernel build directory... /lib/modules/4.12.5-gentoo/build
checking kernel source version... Not found
configure: error: *** Cannot find UTS_RELEASE definition.

!!! Please attach the following file when seeking support:
!!! /var/tmp/portage/sys-kernel/spl-0.7.1/work/spl-0.7.1/config.log
 * ERROR: sys-kernel/spl-0.7.1::gentoo failed (configure phase):
 *   econf failed
 *
 * Call stack:
 *   ebuild.sh, line  115:  Called src_configure
 * environment, line 3831:  Called autotools-utils_src_configure
 * environment, line  614:  Called econf
'--docdir=/usr/share/doc/spl-0.7.1' '--bindir=/bin' '--sbindir=/sbin'
'--with-config=all' '--with-linux=/usr/src/linux'
'--with-linux-obj=/lib/modules/4.12.5-gentoo/build' '--disable-debug'
 *phase-helpers.sh, line  665:  Called __helpers_die 'econf failed'
 *   isolated-functions.sh, line  117:  Called die
 * The specific snippet of code:
 *   die "$@"

Googling around for the "Cannot find UTS_RELEASE" complaint reveals
that a few people have encountered this problem over the years.  It
appeared in those cases to be attributable to the user running the
configuration script not having sufficient authority to read
./include/generated/utsrelease.h in the kernel tree.   As far as I can
tell, I think I ought to have sufficient permission to read that file.
I've gone so far as to chmod 777 the entire kernel tree to ensure
sufficient access.  No luck with that "solution": same error.

I've tried strace on emerge to see if I could figure out what it's
doing when it's looking for UTS_RELEASE, but no luck  with that
either.  Nothing that I can find in Bugzilla, either, although that
could be due to inexperience in using it.

Any idea what could be going on, or how I could go about debugging it
more effectively?

Thanks,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] upgrading to gcc-5 (on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

[John Blinka]

> Is that the entire procedure needed?

That's what I did a while back.  Nothing broke as a result.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] layman: cannot properly execute...

[John Blinka]

>> Any ideas on how to debug this?
>
> First of all, update all affected parties to the latest versions
> (eix, portage, layman).

Did that.  I'm always up to date.

>
> Second, use divide and conqueror strategy. If this is the eix
> problem, isolate it to eix only without invoking layman (or emaint
> sync -a or what on the earth you were doing?!).

I use eix-sync, so I believe this is a problem with eix rather than
any ancillary software.

>
> Try with eix-update. If problem persists, look for what eix cache
> method you are using: see man eix for the list, there are many of
> them. Since you have exec error, it likely is ebuild, try to change
> it to parse or metadata.
>

eix-update gives the same error messages as eix-sync.  I've tried
reading the eix
man page, and have to admit that I don't understand what the various
cache methods mean.  I did try both  "eix-update -m science parse" and
"eix-update -m science metadata" without solving the problem (and without
me understanding precisely how these commands change the situation).
FWIW,  eix --dump gives

# STRING
# Portage cache-backend that should be used for the overlays.
# (metadata[:*]/sqlite/flat[:*]/portage-2.1/parse[*][|]ebuild[*]/eix[*][:*])
OVERLAY_CACHE_METHOD="parse|ebuild*"

In my installations, I note that there's a
/usr/portage/metadata/md5-cache directory, but no
/var/lib/layman/science/metadata
cache directories.  Is something missing?

Is there some place other than the eix man page that describes these
various kinds of caches?

Thanks for your suggestions,

John

[gentoo-user] layman: cannot properly execute...

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

For some time I've been getting messages like:

cannot properly execute
/var/lib/layman/science/virtual/lapack/lapack-3.6-r100.ebuild

for *every* package in the science overlay.  This happened on 2 of 3
very similar gentoo
systems I maintain, but not the third.  As far as I could tell, the
permissions and
ownership of all /etc/portage and /usr/portage and /var/lib/layman
files and directories
are identical.  All the machines have the same /etc/passwd and /etc/group files,
the same /var/lib/portage/world files, and so on.  I've gone to some
effort to make these
machines as identical as possible.  I have done layman -d science then layman -a
science to see if wiping out the overlay then reinstalling it would
help, but that makes no
difference.

Googling the error produces just a few hits that recommend permissions
and ownerships
that helped solve this problem for others, but don't help me.

It appears that this error message comes from /usr/bin/eix.  I've
looked through the
source code a bit, but it's been long enough since I've messed with C
that this didn't
yield any answers.

strace indicates that eix does an lstat on every element of
/var/lib/layman/science/virtual/lapack/lapack-3.6-r100.ebuild before
deciding to print the
error message.  It also indicates that eix does a setuid and setgid to
portage:portage
early in its execution.  As far as I can tell, portage:portage ought
to be able to both read
and execute this ebuild (and all the other ones eix complains about).

And now, out of the blue apparently, the third system has started
spitting out this error
message as well.

Any ideas on how to debug this?

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Genlop oddity

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 6:47 AM, Peter Humphrey <pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk>
wrote:

>
> How is it possible for genlop's reported ETA to increase while its time
> spent so far also increases? Could the concurrent gnutls merging have
> affected it? Surely not.


I've noticed the same oddity recently while building a couple of new amd64
boxes.  Unfortunately, I can't document my observations
with precise numbers, but I have noticed it on multiple occasions when
simultaneously emerging, say, two packages that each
take hours to build.  As an example, If the estimate for the remaining time
was another 1/2-1 hr while the 2d build was sharing system
resources with the 1st, I've seen the 2d build estimate jump to 1-2 hr when
having exclusive access to system resources after the 1st
finishes. It's almost as if somewhere in the code there's logic that
estimates time remaining as proportional to available system
resources available instead of inversely proportional.

This isn't a subtle anomaly, in my opinion.  I've used genlop in this way
to monitor build times for ages and I've never seen it behave
this way before.  And I haven't changed my build options by fooling around
with -jN or by trying to do other things on the system while
emerging.  New behavior for genlop, or a 32/64 bit thing?  (I've recently
gone 64 bit and that's where I see the discrepancy.)  Glad
to see that someone else has experienced the same thing, and I'm not going
crazy (although some might argue this is hardly proof...)

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

[John Blinka]

Appreciate all the commentary on sysrescuecd/uefi/booting.  You anticipated
my needs - almost at that point in the install.  I will definitely try
gummiboot.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Neil Bothwick  wrote:

>
> SystemRescueCd has boot menu options for picking the kernel, just pick
> either rescue64 or altker64.
>

I did try that at least once, but I think I compensated for doing the right
thing at that point with making mistakes elsewhere.  I'll give it another
try now that I have a 64 bit kernel compiled on the target machine.  I'll
need that to get the uefi environment I need to accomplish uefi booting.
Appreciate your reminding me!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 12:36 PM, Ron Farrer 
wrote:

>
> Generally, 'uname -m' should report x86_64 for 64-bit (amd64) and i686
> for 32-bit (x86).


uname -m did give x86_64, but...


> ... another check can be 'file /sbin/init' which will report as something
> along the lines of
> "/sbin/init: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV),
> dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for
> GNU/Linux 2.6.32, stripped"
>

file /sbin/init gave ELF 32-bit LSB...

So I guess my syrescuecd is 32 bits.

Using the amd64 handbook did the trick with the kernel.  Now onto learning
about uefi.  Thanks for your help!

John

Re: [gentoo-user] CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

[John Blinka]

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:31 AM, Michael Mol  wrote:

>
> You should use the AMD64 handbook, not the x86 handbook, if you're trying
> to
> install on x86_64 hardware.
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64
>
> More importantly, you should be booted into a 64-bit environment. That
> means
> using a 64-bit live image for your initial boot, and using an amd64 stage3.
>
> EFI has similar requirements; you'll need to be booted via EFI in the first
> place in order to set up the bootloader properly; your firmware won't make
> the
> necessary hardware calls available to register your bootloader if you're
> not
> booted in EFI mode.
>
> HTH


I had read similar thoughts about booting into a 64 bit environment before
posting and had gone to some effort to figure out whether the sysrescuecd
kernel was, in fact, 64 bit.  Its /proc/config.gz seemed to indicate 64
bit, as did uname -a.  But I really don't know if there is a definitive way
of determining whether a running kernel is 64 or 32 bit.

I was booted via EFI, so that part of my installation process was correct.

I never thought to look in the AMD64 handbook.  Thanks for the suggestion -
will give it a try.

John

[gentoo-user] CPU you selected does not support x86-64 instruction set

[John Blinka]

Hello, Gentooers:

I have a new Dell 17 5759 with core i5-6200U skylake cpu on which I'm
trying to dual boot windows 10 and gentoo.  All the rest of my gentoo
hardware is much older, so this new laptop introduces 2 technologies new to
me: uefi and 64 bit kernels.

I installed gentoo using the x86 handbook and a recent sysrescuecd usb
drive.  The install was unremarkable except for trying to build a 64 bit
kernel.  No matter what I do, the kernel build fails very early with the
message:

kernel/bounds.c:1:0 error: CPU you selected does not support x86-64
instruction set.

Looking at bounds.c does not enlighten me.

I've tried specifying a 64 bit kernel in various ways:

setting CONFIG_64BIT=y and CONFIG_X86_64=y via make menuconfig,

make defconfig, which claims it uses an x86_64_defconfig, and sets the 2
configuration variables above to "y",

and genkernel, which says it's getting arch-specific config.sh from
/usr/share/genkernel/arch/x86_64/config.sh, which also sets the 2 variables
above to "y".

So, a 64 bit sysrescuecd kernel does run on this box, and its /proc/cpuinfo
tells me that it does indeed have a core i5-6200U cpu which, per Google,
does support the x86-64 instruction set.   I believe I've told the kernel
make system that I want a 64 bit kernel and that the cpu I want to run it
on supports the x86-64 instruction set.  Not trusting my kernel config
knowledge, I've tried letting clean kernel installations produce a 64 bit
kernel configuration for me via make defconfig and genkernel, both of which
appear to be attempting 64 bit configurations.  All of these attempts fail
the same way.  I've tried all of this on gentoo-sources-4.4.6 and
-4.1.15-r1.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:25 PM, Dale  wrote:

> Top posting since John started it.  lol
>

Sigh...  Can I blame it on gmail's interface (rather than me not paying
attention...)?  Sorry.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] Calm

[John Blinka]

I've been meaning to write such a post for some time now.  Thanks for
prompting me to add my 2 cents.

I've been using Gentoo for perhaps 15 years.  There have been a few rough
patches along the way resolved by new reinstalls, but overall this has been
by far the best computing environment I've ever used.  (And one of the best
online communities I've ever lurked in.)  I remember feeling quite
apprehensive at my first install after giving the Handbook my first look,
but that install went well, and I've never looked back.  I've been able to
transition from using Gentoo as a professional development system for large
scale parallel numerical stuff, to using it for some personal work in
medical informatics, and lately digital photography.  In general, I've
found that Gentoo just works, given a little effort to understand how to
make it work via its truly wonderful array of well written documentation.
I really like the ease with which I've been able to venture into new
categories of software and computing. Every time I've needed something new,
it's been in portage and has been fairly easy to install, configure, and
use.

I recently had to do reinstalls on all my systems due to disk failures.
Took a few days, but I've been living in a sweet spot ever since, with
everything working perfectly on all systems.

Thanks to all who've made this possible!

On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Alan Mackenzie  wrote:

> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> I'm just saying hello to confirm I'm still here.
>
> For many months now, Gentoo has simply worked for me, without problems.
> I sync my system several times a week, and emerge just works.
>
> The last bit of excitement I had was in early 2015 when I was trying to
> sort out the mess in my xfce4 system after gnome-3 had been made stable.
> In the end, I gave up and reinstalled Gentoo, which this time took me
> only a week.
>
> Admittedly, there's very little which is cutting edge on my system - the
> box is 6½ years old, it boots with lilo on an old fashioned BIOS, my
> filesystems are ext3 (or in one case, ext2) on spinning rust.  The only
> remotely adventurous things I've got are RAID-1 (via the kernel) and
> lvm2.
>
> So a big thanks to all the developers who've brought about this happy
> state of affairs!
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

[gentoo-user] anybody have math extension working on mediawiki-1.18.2?

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

I have just upgraded mediawiki from 1.16.5 to 1.18.2.  Everything
works well except the math extension.  When I try to display a page
with math on it, I get the following error message:

Failed to parse (PNG conversion failed; check for correct installation
of latex and dvipng (or dvips + gs + convert)):

I've gone through the recommendations in
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Enable_TeX and
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Troubleshooting_math_display_errors
without any success.

Dvips, gs, and convert are all installed with permissions that enable
the apache user to execute them, latex is installed (via texlive), and
I even threw in the mathtex package, thinking that it sounded as if it
must be useful without knowing whether it is actually used.

Anybody have this working?  Care to share how you did it, or suggest
debugging techniques?

Thanks,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] LVM, /usr and really really bad thoughts.

[John Blinka]

-- Sent from my Palm Pre
On Mar 10, 2012 10:38 AM, Neil Bothwick lt;n...@digimed.co.ukgt; wrote: 

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:58:18 +0100, pk wrote:



gt; Btw, does anyone know which version of udev requires access to /usr? I'm

gt; running latest stable here 171-r5 and I have separate partitions for

gt; /home /opt /usr /usr/local /tmp /var, all on LVM and /boot on a separate

gt; partition outside of LVM, and it works fine.



I'm using the latest testing with a separate /usr and no problems.





-- 

Neil Bothwick



WinErr 014: Keyboard locked - Try anything you can think of.

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Bill Longman bill.long...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 03/22/2011 08:43 AM, John Blinka wrote:

 And for that matter, does anyone who uses a dark background AND uses
 vimdiff as their etc-update tool run up against the same issue: vimdiff
 mode and certain syntax highlighting rules combine to make some sections
 of documents completely illegible.

Same thing happens with a light background.

john

Re: [gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote:
 On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:43:54 -0400, John Blinka wrote:

 You can remap the colours portage uses in /etc/portage/color.map. See man
 portage and man color.map for details.

 --
 Neil Bothwick

 c:Press Enter to Exit


Thanks for the color.map pointer.  A web search turns up one person's solution:

http://forum.soft32.com/linux/gentoo-portage-color-map-light-background-ftopict332304.html

A /etc/portage/color.map file containing just this one line makes the
invisible yellow portage output legible on my white background:

yellow=brown

I appreciate the help.  Problem solved!

John

[gentoo-user] color in terminals with white background

[John Blinka]

Hi, All,

For quite a few years I've had a low level irritation with the font
colors in my x11-terms/terminal.  I like a white background and a
black font in my terminals, and that satisfies me perfectly 99.44% of
the time.  The colors that appear by default with the ls command are
perfect.  But the colors that appear when I do an emerge -ptDuNv, and
the colors that appear when interactively merging config files with
dispatch-conf (configured to use vimdiff) are sometimes completely
unreadable.  In particular, the light yellow font on a white
background that portage uses sometimes is almost invisible.  I have
tried now and then in the past to develop my own color scheme, but
without notable success.  I once tried making the yellow darker in
various ways, and that helped, but then the (formerly yellow) text
became unreadable if I highlighted it.  I tried dark backgrounds for a
while, but I guess I have too many years of reading black print on
white pages; dark backgrounds are just wrong for me.  And I haven't
found any satisfactory answers with web searches.  Is there anybody
with a font color scheme they like for use on a white background?

Thanks for any suggestions,

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: OT: advice sought on new laptop for Gentoo

[John Blinka]

 I paid the extra to get
 16:9 @ 1920x1200. Best thing I ever did laptop-wise - I can get two webpages
 side by side on the screen looking very natural.

Mind telling me what you got?  The 1200 part sounds attractive to me.

John Blinka

[gentoo-user] OT: advice sought on new laptop for Gentoo

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

My trusty Inspiron 8200 is on death's door and so I'm looking for a
new laptop - one that will run Gentoo straightforwardly, of course.

I really liked the 1600x1200 display on this machine, which I greatly
prefer to the 1600x900 display on the more modern Inspiron 1545 I own.
 Most of what I do now is through a web browser, and I can see much
more of a web page with 1200 lines of display than I can with 900.
And I dislike the massive width of the 1545 which makes it much less
portable than the old 8200.  I'd love to replace my 8200 with a
machine of similar dimensions, but thinner and lighter.  However, I
cannot find any machine on Dell's website with a 4x3 aspect ratio -
they all seem to be approximately 16x9 now.

So,  is 16x9 all that's available now in laptops?

If I'm stuck with a 16x9 aspect ratio, then I'd like to get something
significantly narrower and more portable than my 1545 (14.75, 37.5 cm
wide) and with as many horizontal lines in the display as possible.

Any suggestions?

(And, yes, I'm open to a non-Dell solution.)

Thanks for your suggestions,

John Blinka

[gentoo-user] amanda run and build failure

[John Blinka]

Hi, All,

After a long period of flawless behavior, I have recently (since
August 2) had both runtime and build failures with amanda.  I do daily
gentoo updates, always use revdep-rebuild and lafilefixer, always
follow post installation advice in the log.  I can't reinstall amanda
because the build fails (documented below), and I can't use amcheck to
see if amanda thinks there's a problem with configuration because
amcheck blows an assertion when I try to run it (also documented
below).  I've found no mention of others with the assertion failure
via Google.  I have not changed anything about my backup configuration
in more than a year, and daily backups have run flawlessly until
August 2.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?



runtime:

*** THE DUMPS DID NOT FINISH PROPERLY!

Hostname: tobey
Org : tobey backup
Config  : tobey
Date: August 2, 2010

The next tape Amanda expects to use is: tape-4.

FAILURE DUMP SUMMARY:
  tobey /home RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /etc  RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /var/lib/portage  RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /root RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /usr/localRESULTS MISSING
  tobey /export   RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /var/www  RESULTS MISSING
  tobey /var/lib/mysqlRESULTS MISSING
 driver: FATAL reading result from taper: Connection reset by peer


STATISTICS:
 Total   Full  Incr.
         
Estimate Time (hrs:min)0:00
Run Time (hrs:min) 0:00
Dump Time (hrs:min)0:00   0:00   0:00
Output Size (meg)   0.00.00.0
Original Size (meg) 0.00.00.0
Avg Compressed Size (%) -- -- --
Filesystems Dumped0  0  0
Avg Dump Rate (k/s) -- -- --

Tape Time (hrs:min)0:00   0:00   0:00
Tape Size (meg) 0.00.00.0
Tape Used (%)   0.00.00.0
Filesystems Taped 0  0  0

Chunks Taped  0  0  0
Avg Tp Write Rate (k/s) -- -- --


NOTES:
 driver: taper pid 29417 exited with signal 6
 planner: Incremental of tobey:/export bumped to level 3.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/var/lib/mysql promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/home promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/var/www promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/etc promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/root promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/usr/local promoted from 13 days ahead.
 planner: Full dump of tobey:/var/lib/portage promoted from 13 days ahead.


DUMP SUMMARY:
  DUMPER STATS   TAPER STATS
HOSTNAME DISKL ORIG-kB  OUT-kB  COMP%  MMM:SS   KB/s MMM:SS   KB/s
-- - -
tobey/etc  MISSING ---
tobey/export   MISSING ---
tobey/home MISSING ---
tobey/root MISSING ---
tobey/usr/localMISSING ---
tobey-/lib/mysql   MISSING ---
tobey-ib/portage   MISSING ---
tobey/var/www  MISSING ---

(brought to you by Amanda version 2.6.0p2)


build:

r...@tobey:portage-- emerge --info =app-backup/amanda-2.6.0_p2-r4
Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/x86/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.4.3,
glibc-2.11.2-r0, 2.6.34-gentoo-r1 i686)
=
System Settings
=
System uname: 
linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r1-i686-pentium-r-_dual-core_cpu_e53...@_2.60ghz-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:00:20 +
distcc 3.1 i686-pc-linux-gnu [disabled]
ccache version 2.4 [disabled]
app-shells/bash: 4.0_p37
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.11
dev-lang/python: 2.6.5-r3, 3.1.2-r4
dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7
dev-util/cmake:  2.8.1-r2
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13
sys-apps/sandbox:1.6-r2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.65
sys-devel/automake:  1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.20.1-r1
sys-devel/gcc:   4.4.3-r2
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.30-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=x86
ACCEPT_LICENSE=*
CBUILD=i686-pc-linux-gnu
CFLAGS=-O2 -march=i686 -pipe
CHOST=i686-pc-linux-gnu
CONFIG_PROTECT=/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK=/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d
/etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amanda run and build failure

[John Blinka]

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 12:35 PM, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 08/08/2010 05:58 AM, John Blinka wrote:


 the end of the log file contains

 /usr/bin/install: will not overwrite just-created

 `/var/tmp/portage/app-backup/amanda-2.6.0_p2-r4/image//usr/share/man/man8/amcheckdump.8'
 with `amcheckdump.8'
 make[2]: *** [install-man8] Error 1

 There is a thread starting July 28 dir is rwx but can't create file.
 Could any of that discussion apply to your problem?  Not sure.


After a little googling, I suspect that's not the problem.  It looks
like the '/usr/bin/install: will not overwrite just-created ...'
message has something to do with an erroneous attempt to install the
same file twice, possibly related to behavior in specific versions of
automake.  That may explain the fact that I was once able to install
this version of amanda, but can't now after subsequent upgrades in
automake.

John

[RESOLVED] Re: [gentoo-user] how to amrecover in amanda-2.6.0

[John Blinka]

I'm not exactly sure what I've done to fix things, but backups and
amrecovers are now working properly.

For the record, on the backup server, the /etc/xinetd.d/amanda file contains:

service amanda
{
socket_type = dgram
protocol= udp
wait= yes
user= amanda
group   = amanda
groups  = yes
server  = /usr/libexec/amanda/amandad
server_args = amdump amindexd amidxtaped

only_from   = 192.168.1.0
disable = no
log_type= SYSLOG daemon debug
}

and, again on the backup server, the /etc/amanda/amandahosts file contains:

# Machine-name for those hosts which are permitted to back up (fully-qualified
# is best).  An entry in /etc/hosts adds fail-safe against DNS death :-)
# |
# | permitted user-name
# | |

server  amanda amdump
server  root amindexd amidxtaped
client  root amindexd amidxtaped

On the backup client, the /etc/xinetd.d/amanda file is identical to
the server's.

On the backup client, the /etc/amanda/amandahosts file contains:

# vim: ts=4 sts=4 sw=4 noexpandtab:
# Machine-name for those hosts which are permitted to back up (fully-qualified
# is best).  An entry in /etc/hosts adds fail-safe against DNS death :-)
# |
# | permitted user-name
# | |

client  amanda amdump
server  amanda amdump
client  root amindexd amidxtaped

I used the fqdn for the client and server names in the above files.

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] how to amrecover in amanda-2.6.0

[John Blinka]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 5:42 AM, Stefan G. Weichingerli...@xunil.at wrote:


 Didn't the binary-paths change with 2.6 ?

Yes.


 Check if /usr/libexec/amanda/amandad exists and adjust the xinetd-entry
 if necessary.


Did that.  The binaries exist and xinetd entries point correctly.

(Sorry for the very long delay in replying.  My backup machine's root
partition disk started
failing, and it has taken me a long time to rebuild things.)

John

Re: [gentoo-user] how to amrecover in amanda-2.6.0

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 2:32 AM, Stefan G. Weichingerli...@xunil.at wrote:

 Try amoldrecover for a start ...



From what I understand, amoldrecover is for recovering files on a
=2.5 client from
a  2.5 server.  My server and clients are all =2.6.  Am I misunderstanding?

John

[gentoo-user] how to amrecover in amanda-2.6.0

[John Blinka]

Hi, all,

I recently upgraded from amanda-2.4.5 to amanda-2.6.0_p2-r4.  I think
I've been able to make backups
successfully: the backup reports amanda sends afterwards look
reasonable.  However, I've not been able
to do restores.  It appears that the contents of
/etc/amanda/amandahosts and /etc/xinetd.d/amanda have
changed between these two versions, and I suspect that my attempts at
updating the contents are at
fault.

My 2.4.5 amandahosts file looked like this:

my_host.my_domain   amanda
my_host.my_domain   root

and the 2.6.0_p2-r4 amandahosts looks like:

my_host.my_domain   amanda amdump
my_host.my_domain   root amindexd amidxtaped


My 2.4.5 amanda file looked like this:

service amanda
{
socket_type = dgram
protocol= udp
wait= yes
user= amanda
group   = amanda
groups  = yes
server  = /usr/libexec/amanda/amandad
only_from   = 192.168.1.0
disable = no
}

service amandaidx
{
socket_type = stream
protocol= tcp
wait= no
user= amanda
group   = amanda
groups  = yes
server  = /usr/libexec/amanda/amindexd
only_from   = 192.168.1.0
disable = no
}

service amidxtape
{
socket_type = stream
protocol= tcp
wait= no
user= amanda
group   = amanda
groups  = yes
server  = /usr/libexec/amanda/amidxtaped
only_from   = 192.168.1.0
disable = no
}


and my 2.6.0_p2-r4 amanda file looks like:

service amanda
{
disable = no
flags   = IPv4
socket_type = stream
protocol= tcp
wait= no
user= amanda
group   = amanda
groups  = yes
server  = /usr/libexec/amanda/amandad
server_args = -auth=bsdtcp amdump amindexd amidxtaped
}

The above was taken from
/usr/share/doc/amanda-2.6.0_p2-r4/example/xinetd.amandaserver.bz2.

A run of amcheck shows no errors.

Running su -c /usr/sbin/amadmin my_host find amanda produces the
expected output.

Running amrecover -C my_host -t my_host -s my_host -d
file:/backup/my_host/vtapes
produces a pause of about 30 seconds then the following output:
AMRECOVER Version 2.6.0p2. Contacting server on my_host ...
[request failed: timeout waiting for ACK]

/var/log/messages contains nothing enlightening.  Neither does
/var/amanda/my_host/log.*

Thanks for any ideas on how to debug this!

John Blinka

Re: [gentoo-user] ssmtp att woes

[John Blinka]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Stroller [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:


 On 5 Dec 2008, at 03:12, John Blinka wrote:

 ...
 I've run out of patience with this and am
 now relaying my mail to smtp.gmail.com via ssmtp.  That worked
 immediately without any of the att pain. ...


 That will always change your from:  email address to your @gmail one. If
 you own my.cool.domain.com then you can't send email with a from: 
 address within that domain.



That's  what I want to happen, so it's fine.




 BT in the UK do this with Yahoo!, too. You have to login to the Yahoo!
 webmail for the account, go into options (I think it's under other
 accounts) and add your other email addresses. You'll be able to use them as
 your from:  addresses with the Yahoo SMTP server once you've clicked on
 the links in the emails they send you.


ATT's  yahoo interface has an options menu, and I've explored it
extensively, but
I haven't found such a place to add from addresses.  Mysteriously (to me
at least), once
I gave up on ATT's smtp server and set my system up to relay through gmail,
my
nightly amanda jobs successfully sent their email reports to my
att.netemail account.
(I'd forgotten to change the email reporting address from att.net to
gmail.com in my
amanda.conf files.)  So, I guess att/yahoo regard gmail as a legitimate
source of email.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] ssmtp att woes

[John Blinka]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Mick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:



 Have a go at adding:

 UseSTARTTLS=YES

 and remove:

 UseTLS=YES

 --


Thanks for the suggestion, but ssmtp doesn't like it:

[-] 220 smtp119.sbc.mail.sp1.yahoo.com ESMTP
[-] EHLO tobey
[-] 250 8BITMIME
[-] STARTTLS
[-] 502 unimplemented (#5.5.1)
send-mail: Cannot open smtp.att.yahoo.com:587
Can't send mail: sendmail process failed with error code 1

John

Re: [gentoo-user] ssmtp att woes

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 3:33 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 Hi John,

 I suppose you use a wrong username. According to
 http://helpme.att.net/article.php?item=287 you have to use the full mail
 address. Otherwise check your password for correctness.


Tried that.  Didn't help.  I've been known to supply incorrect passwords,
but I think it's correct in my ssmtp.conf.




 Another problem might be the line in your revaliases file. The separator
 between the columns is a colon not equals (right after the 'root'). If you
 don't send mail to other people from your root account you do not need that
 line anyway.


You're right, but correcting this doesn't solve the problem,. either.


Thanks for both suggestions.

John

Re: [gentoo-user] ssmtp att woes

[John Blinka]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Håkon Alstadheim
[EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote:

 Since this thread has been going on for so long without a resolution, I
 thought I'd mention that I recently switched to nullmailer from ssmtp. Im
 using port 587 with STARTTLS, and I find nullmailer way easier to set up.
 Just put --user and --pass parameters in /etc/nullmailer/remotes.


Thanks for this suggestion.   I tried nullmailer, and it is, indeed, easier
to set up.   And I think it worked, too, but then I ran afoul of a 553
error in tt/yahoo's smtp server - something about an unverified
alternate email address.  I'm guessing that nullmailer worked, but
that att/yahoo have some additional layer of requirements for a
working smtp connection.  I've run out of patience with this and am
now relaying my mail to smtp.gmail.com via ssmtp.  That worked
immediately without any of the att pain.

Thanks to everyone who responded!

John