On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 6:57 AM Neil Bothwick <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:50:42 +0100, Michael wrote: > > > !!! The following installed packages are masked: > > - app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-5.2.40.137108::gentoo (masked by: > > package.mask) /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask: > > # Michał Górny <[email protected]> (2020-08-22) > > # These packages (or package versions) still require Python 2.7. > > # They are either dead upstream, their Python 3 porting efforts are > > # not progressing or their maintainers are simply unresponsive. > > # Please do not remove any packages from this list unless you actually > > # port it to Python 3. > > # Removal in 30 days. Tracker bug #694800. > > > > For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge > > man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook. > > ===================== > > > > I have a number of VBox VM systems, some with active software licenses > > running on them and the VBox-bin is a low-maintenance and convenient > > way to run them. I'd prefer to avoid emerging a non-bin VBox. Is there > > some way I could keep older packages running in Gentoo, until more up > > to date versions appear again in the tree (if ever)? > > Copy the ebuild to a local overlay and add app-emulation/virtualbox-bin > to /etc/portage/profile/package.unmask.
You would probably also want to grab a copy of all the distfiles and keep them safe, because they'll disappear from the mirrors. Note that this is really only a stopgap. As packages that require python 2.7 are removed from the repo, we may see more and more core python packages removed as well over a longer timeframe. It will probably become increasingly less practical to continue to use python 2.7 as a result. You could in theory move all of this stuff into an overlay. As such they will probably work "forever," but you will end up shouldering all the work around maintaining security, compatibility, etc. I would encourage using this as an opportunity to transition to something else. On a side note, I've used VirtualBox in the past, and it is pretty simple to use. However, you might find KMS a much better solution all-around. Virt-manager is a package that wraps a nice GUI around it, and it isn't too different from Virtualbox. It is a little more complex in that it is more layered - you could stick your VMs on Ceph block storage or iSCSI or whatever, or build your VMs with virt-manager and run them from virsh from the command line. One key feature is that the kernel layer of it is built into the upstream kernel and it is 100% FOSS, so you have a VERY robust level of support. The complexity comes from the fact that kernel/userspace/UI/etc is all separated into different packages, but emerge virt-manager should give you everything (you might need to enable KMS in your kernel as well, and maybe set up networking). I'll also note that 95% of the time when you're using a VM running Linux you're probably better-off using a container. Also, note that sometimes packages that get masked may still end up getting migrated. So, you should think about migration once the mask appears but you have 30 days, and if you want to try to proxy maintain the package you could do so, or perhaps another gentoo dev will notice the problem and step in. If upstream doesn't support python 3 this is unlikely, but if upstream does and the package is just out of date in Gentoo it is more likely that you or somebody else could fix it. -- Rich
