begin quote On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 10:24:43 -0600 John Goerzen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello, > > I've been a Debian user for many years and am trying out Gentoo this > week. I've found a lot of information online -- thanks -- but I am > left with some questions. > > 1. How can I ensure that my Gentoo system has only Free software? > > I was somewhat surprised and alarmed to find that "emerge kde" wanted > to install Motif, which is generally considered non-free. I observed > that the ebuild files in the portage directory do contain a "LICENSE=" > line, but I couldn't figure out how to instruct emerge to > allow/disallow given licenses. Currently you cant, see last weeks big flameage in -dev for possible solutions, reasoning and whatnot. They should be google-able. (hint, ACCEPT_LICENSE is a nice searchword for google ) > 2. I'm a little confused about the nature of a released distribution > and supported architectures. > > My main reason for interest in Gentoo is to run it on my Alpha -- > these machines benefit more significantly from optimizations than PCs > tend to. Some of the online docs say that Alpha is a "supported" > architecture; yet the only installation CDs for them are in > "experimental". That gives me pause when considering using Gentoo on > Alpha for critical work. Is that pause justified? Not too sure, I think it may be that the -installation media- is experimental (its harder to produce the install cd's tha work on all hardware than to create the distribution, in general. ) However installation media is just that, media. And you can choose to use "whatever media you want" if you are inclined. I'd suggest asking somone who owns an alpha in this case, rather than on -user (try the alpha list ;) > > Similarly, does one generally track the "stable" distribution by > setting ARCH="x86" instead of ARCH="~x86"? If so, are security > updates pushed to the stable distribution as well? I observed that, > following the manual for building my kernel, gentoo-sources fetched a > fairly old(2.4.20) kernel -- one that may have several security holes > (though there were so many patches to it, it was hard to evaluate). Actually for x86 it is ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" instead of "x86", the testing is for the ebuild, not for the software, and is a necessary process to avoid interaction problems in wider systems. Builds are regularly retagged as "x86" after a period of no obvious bugs, reports, or just from being in use thoroughly. (there has been a voting page where "this works for me" , but that infrastructure was lost and is in planning stage for revival) Security updates are also tagged as stable (for all arches , x86, alpha, sparc.. .you name it) where necessary to be updateable. So far, one big difference with debian is that we do not as of yet provide a "frozen solid" tree, but work with as single one, thats tagged differently to recognize status on different arches. > 3. How do I enable kdm? > > I emerge'd kde, but found no /etc/init.d/ script for kdm to use with > rc-update. rc-update add xdm default, look in /etc/rc.conf for selection of wich DM you want. > 4. What happens if I add "sandbox" to features in /etc/make.conf? > That sounds like a feature I'd like, but none of the manpages I looked > at would explain what it does. all builds will be sandboxed, which is an LD_PRELOAD hack for glibc that prevents write operations to other parts of the filesystem. its mainly used for development purpouses, but doesn't affect adversively to add it. (try "sandbox" and do some write work fex, it will start a new shell with limitations ) > 5. As I work more on the system, I get more and more errors like the > following from emerge: > > > * Caching service dependencies... > [ ok ] > >>> Auto-cleaning packages ... > !!! Invalid db entry: /var/db/pkg/*sys-fs/devfsd > !!! Couldn't find match for dev-perl/libvorbis-perl > !!! Couldn't find match for media-libs/glut > !!! Couldn't find match for media-libs/xvid > !!! Couldn't find match for media-libs/divx4linux > !!! Couldn't find match for media-libs/libmikmod > !!! Couldn't find match for media-sound/cdparanoia > > >>> No outdated packages were found on your system. > Not serious, i haven't found the real source here, but its a lockfile that doesn't go away after devfsd. The "couldn't find match" are simply messages stating that it cannot uninstall a previous version, because none was installed. hope I've clarified things. //Spider -- begin .signature This is a .signature virus! Please copy me into your .signature! See Microsoft KB Article Q265230 for more information. end
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