[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Grant,

On Wednesday, 2024-04-17 14:11:21 -, you wrote:

> ...
> If what you want is access to all upstream longeterm kernel versions,
> then you should be using sys-kernel/vanilla-sources.

I was not aware of this package.   Excatly what could come in handy,  if
everything else fails.  Thank you for that pointer :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Wednesday, 2024-04-17 10:10:56 +0100, you wrote:

> On Tuesday, 16 April 2024 20:26:25 BST Grant Edwards wrote:
> > On 2024-04-16, Dr Rainer Woitok  wrote:
> > ...
> > > But, to get back to the beginning of this discussion: if there is a
> > > risk that my aging hardware possibly can less and less cope with
> > > newer and newer kernels, should I put something like
> > > 
> > >>=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-6.7.0
> > > 
> > > into file "package.mask" to stay with "longterm" 6.6.* kernels?
> > ...
>
> I am not sure the assumption "... aging hardware possibly can less and less 
> cope with newer and newer kernels" is correct.  As already mentioned newer 
> kernels have both security and bug fixes.  As long as you stick with stable 
> gentoo-sources you'll have these in your system.

But since the 6.6.* kernel is LTS,  security and bug fixes will be back-
ported into it and all is well.  And if this can't be done for some rea-
son or other,  I can still cautiously advance my entry in file "package.
mask" to the next LTS kernel.

> ...
> PS. Regarding your earlier question about different make *config commands and 
> their meaning you can check the latest make help page:
> 
> $ cd /usr/src/linux
> $ make help

Done.  Again learned something.  Thanks a lot :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Grant,

On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 19:26:25 -, you wrote:

> ...
> That means that all gentoo-sources stable kernels are "longterm"
> kernel versions on kernel.org.  It does not mean that all "longterm"
> kernel versions from kernel.org are available as "stable" in
> gentoo-sources.
> 
> It is a statement that "gentoo-sources stable" is a subset of
> "kernel.org longterm".

This sort of deteriorates into a debate about words rather than meanings
without explaining HOW LONG  such a series  of related kernels are main-
tained and provided.   After all, "longterm" or "LTS" suggest that these
lines of developement are less short-lived than others.   To give an ex-
ample: the oldest "longterm" kernels  listed on "kernel.org" are 4.19.*,
5.4.* and 5.10.*.  Of these only 5.10.* is still available from Gentoo.

Digging through my Gentoo installation logs,  I can see that 4.19.72 was
one of the first kernels I built myself.   This was somewhen in the mid-
dle of 2019, that is, not yet five years back.  And this kernel line has
already vanished  from Gentoo.   So what time span  are we talking about
when we say "LTS Gentoo kernel"?  Roughly four, three or two years?  And
why is the support provided by Gentoo significantly shorter than that by
"kernel.org"?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Arve,

On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 15:53:48 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Only LTS kernels get stabilised, so this information is readily available.

I'm sure I don't understand this: According to "https://www.kernel.org/;
kernel 6.6.27  is "longterm",  but according to  "eix"  the most  recent
6.6.* kernels are 6.6.22 and 6.6.23  which both are non-stable  (well, I
ran my last "sync" immediately before the profile upgrade, so this might
not be current).  I'm still using stable kernel 6.6.13 as my backup ker-
nel, but this kernel is no longer provided by Gentoo.  So, what precise-
ly does LTS or "longterm" mean?

But, to get back to the beginning of this discussion: if there is a risk
that my  aging hardware  possibly can less and less  cope with newer and
newer kernels, should I put something like

   >=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-6.7.0

into file "package.mask" to stay with "longterm" 6.6.* kernels?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Tuesday, 2024-04-16 11:15:07 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> > But this brings up two related questions:
> > 
> > 1. Why does Gentoo  not somehow mark  LTS kernels  either in the version
> >number or in the slot name?  This would make it easier to prevent the
> >installation of too modern kernels.
> 
> My understanding is the gentoo-sources kernels are aligned with the LTS 
> upstream releases.

Right,  they use the same version numbers.   But you can't see from just
looking at the available "gentoo-sources" which one is LTS and which one
is not.   You have to consult "https://www.kernel.org/;  to get this in-
formation.

> ...
> The make oldconfig script will identify new config items not present in your 
> old kernel config, show which is the default option and ask you to 
> interactively select which one you prefer; e.g.
> 
> SPECULATION_MITIGATIONS [Y/n/m/?] (NEW)
> 
> The default option above has been identified as Y, if the devs have 
> determined 
> this is a safe default for the arch.  You can hit Enter to select Y, or type 
> 'n' for no, 'm' for module, or '?' to read the extended description and help 
> for this option before you make up your mind.

Bingo!  This is exactly the information I somehow wasn't able to find in
my early Gentoo days!  You made my day :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Monday, 2024-04-15 12:48:34 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> Why have you set your /boot to be mounted at boot?

Well, I think, I then just followed the Gentoo Handbook.  But I see your
point of saving time  which could be better used to successfully unmount
the "/home/" partition.   I'll change my "/etc/fstab" file  as well as a
few of my scripts.  Thanks for pointing that out :-)

> ...
> MoBo firmware can be notoriously buggy and is 
> typically frozen/abandoned within a couple of years by the OEMs.  In 
> addition, 
> kernel code changes and any previous symbiosis with the firmware can fall 
> apart with a later kernel release.

Hm, this sounds a bit like  "never change your running kernel",  doesn't
it?  But this brings up two related questions:

1. Why does Gentoo  not somehow mark  LTS kernels  either in the version
   number or in the slot name?  This would make it easier to prevent the
   installation of too modern kernels.

2. I'm building new kernels  with "make olddefconfig"  rather than "make
   oldconfig" because I thought providing default values to new configu-
   ration variables is a good idea.   But what precisely does "make old-
   config" do  with new configuration  variables instead?   Just leaving
   them out?  But what's the difference  between not defining a configu-
   ration variable and setting it to a default value?   Or is "make old-
   config" really the way to generate more conservative kernels which do
   not as quickly overburden aging motherboards?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Friday, 2024-01-05 18:46:09 +0100, I myself wrote:

> ...
> since a few month or so off and on my laptop fails to resume from hiber-
> nation due to the  "dirty bit" being set on  the ext4 "/home" partition.

I was reading this flickering by on the screen, and it wasn't quite cor-
rect.  Meanwhile I found this in my "openrc.log":

   fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
   There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
   This is mostly harmless. Differences: (offset:original/backup)
 65:01/00
 Not automatically fixing this.
   Dirty bit is set. Fs was not properly unmounted and some data may be corrupt.
Automatically removing dirty bit.
   *** Filesystem was changed ***
   Writing changes.
   /dev/sda1: 368 files, 116600/258078 clusters
   /dev/sdb1: recovering journal
   /dev/sdb1: Clearing orphaned inode 54789026 (uid=1000, gid=1000, 
mode=0100600, size=32768)
   /dev/sdb1: Clearing orphaned inode 54788311 (uid=1000, gid=1000, 
mode=0100600, size=553900)
   /dev/sdb1: clean, 172662/61054976 files, 36598898/244190385 blocks
* Filesystems repaired

So one cause always is some problem  on disk "/dev/sda1/" ("/boot/") and
another  cause are  one or  more  orphaned inodes  on disk  "/dev/sdb1/"
("/home/").   But while  the values of offset,  original and  backup for
"/dev/sda1/" are  always the same  when this happens,  the number of or-
phaned inodes  on "/dev/sdb1/"  and the inodes itself change from occur-
rence to occurrence.  Besides it only happens sporadically when resuming
from hibernation, not every time.   More precisely, the problem surfaces
when resuming  from hibernation  but could as well  be caused during the
hibernation process itself.

Does this ring some bell somewhere what could cause this?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Successfully upgraded to new profile 23.0

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Wol,

On Tuesday, 2024-04-09 18:36:53 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> Btw, where are all the messages for packages stored? I ought to go
> through them and make sure there aren't any messages of interest...

My script for package installations or upgrades sets

   begin=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z')

before it calls "emerge" and calls the following little "gawk" programme
after "emerge" has finished:

   gawk -v begin="$begin" '
  ! P && /^>>> M/ { match($0," on ([^ ]+ [^ ]+ [^ ]+) for ",m)
if ( m[1] < begin ) next   # Skip old messages.
printf "\n" # Print separator before first message.
P = 1   # Print remaining messages.
  }
P ' /var/log/portage/elog/summary.log | more

However, this probably requires

   PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save-summary:warn"
   PORTAGE_LOGDIR="/var/log/portage"

in your "make.conf" file.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Successfully upgraded to new profile 23.0

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

the upgrade on my old laptop  with two 2.7GHz  Dual-Core Skylake proces-
sors took slightly  more than 2 hours  for the manual upgrading of "bin-
utils", "gcc" and "glibc", and slightly more than 21.5 hours for the fi-
nal upgrade of "@world",  which had to process a total of 1061 packages.
I'm wondering whether  a fresh install  from a stage 3  "tar" ball would
have been faster?

My first Gentoo installation  on this laptop  back in mid 2019 used pro-
file 17.1 (which is still marked "experimental", by the way).  Now, less
than five years later  this profile set is deprecated.   Is five years a
common intervall between enforced Gentoo profile upgrades?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] downloading from cell phone to Gentoo

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Philip,

On Wednesday, 2024-01-17 22:28:27 -0500, you wrote:

> I want to be able to download photos from my new cellphone to Gentoo.

If all else fails,  you could use "adb"  from package "dev-util/android-
tools".   However,  "adb" requires "USB Debugging"  to be enabled on the
cell phone.   This option can be found under  "Settings -> Developer Op-
tions"  (if the "Developer Options"  are still hidden  in the "Settings"
menu,  make them visible once and forever by opening  "Settings -> About
Device -> Software Information" and tapping "Build Number" seven times).

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] "eix" doesn't find a freshly installed package

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Sunday, 2024-01-07 14:21:20 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> I do have to follow up on this, the package was renamed,

Bingo!  That's it.   Soon after my last routine  upgrade which installed
"media-video/vlc" version 3.0.20-r2  and its new dependency "media-libs/
libmpg123"  I inadvertently run another  "emaint sync"  which caused the
"-r2" version of "vlc"  not being available any longer and the now avai-
lable version "-r3" with its renamed dependency not yet being installed.

So another upgrade (currently running) will indeed resolve this.

Many thanks :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] "eix" doesn't find a freshly installed package

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Arve,

On Sunday, 2024-01-07 19:43:31 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
>   running eix
> on its own by default only outputs 50 packages, so there's that.

Not here:

   # env -i eix | grep -v : | grep -c /
   24900
   #

Where do you take this limit from?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] "eix" doesn't find a freshly installed package

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

during my last routine upgrade  package "media-video/vlc"  installed new
dependency  "media-libs/libmpg123".   However,  after installation "eix"
did not list the new package, while "eix-installed" did:

   # eix-update --quiet
   # env -i eix | grep -E 'app-portage/eix|media-libs/libmpg123'
   [I] app-portage/eix
   # env -i eix-installed all | grep -E 'app-portage/eix|media-libs/libmpg123'
   app-portage/eix-0.36.7
   media-libs/libmpg123-1.32.3-r1
   #

Are there any "eix" gurus out there  who can tell me  how to trick "eix"
into listing _all_ packages?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Slightly corrupted file systems when resuming from hibernation

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

since a few month or so off and on my laptop fails to resume from hiber-
nation due to the  "dirty bit" being set on  the ext4 "/home" partition.
At least up to now this never happened when resuming from suspension.

Is my laptop just aging  or did I miss some new "mount" option or kernel
configuration parameter?  Any comments welcome ... :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Abnormal processor temperature.

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Wednesday, 2023-11-29 17:56:37 +, you wrote:

> ...
> It depends on the hardware, this is what I have enabled on an AMD MoBo:
> 
> ~ $ grep SPI /usr/src/linux/.config
> ...
> CONFIG_SCSI_SPI_ATTRS=y
> CONFIG_SPI=y
> CONFIG_SPI_MASTER=y
> ...
> CONFIG_SPI_AMD=m
> ...
> CONFIG_SPI_DYNAMIC=y
> ...
> CONFIG_RTC_I2C_AND_SPI=y

Thanks for the info.  Apart from "CONFIG_SPI_AMD=m" this is what I've
now configured too.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Abnormal processor temperature.

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Tuesday, 2023-11-28 10:13:56 +, you wrote:

> ...
> I suggested enabling the SPI modules because they are used by the CPU to 
> communicate with various sensors, adjust clock frequency between components 
> and thereafter to receive signals a/synchronously to control temperatures.  

What exactly do you suggest?  My kernel (6.1.57) configuration contains:

   $ grep SPI /usr/src/linux/.config|grep -v SPIN
   CONFIG_SCSI_SPI_ATTRS=y
   # CONFIG_SPI is not set
   # SPI RTC drivers
   CONFIG_RTC_I2C_AND_SPI=y
   # SPI and I2C RTC drivers
   $

I played a little  with the  "/" and "?" commands  of "make menuconfig",
activated "CONFIG_SPI"  and found a lot of controllers and drivers,  but
nothing obvious to enable additionally.   However, apparently activating
"CONFIG_SPI" also activated

   CONFIG_NET_VENDOR_ADI=y
   CONFIG_SND_SPI=y
   CONFIG_SPI_DYNAMIC=y
   CONFIG_SPI_MASTER=y

Is this what you are suggesting?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

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

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Saturday, 2023-07-08 03:33:30 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> 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.

I simply don't know  whether or not  build-time related  highlighting is
possible in native Portage.  I retrieve that information by some script-
ing,  which involves sending the output of "emerge --ask" to a log file,
and as soon as  "emerge" asks  whether to continue,  running a script in
another terminal window  which analyses  this log file  using "qlop" and
"gawk".

But to really ban  several buld-time hogs from my rig,  I added "-clang"
and "-llvm"  to my global USE flags,  added "dev-lang/rust" to directory
"package.mask/",  causing "dev-lang/rust-bin" to be used when necessary,
and besides happily replaced "www-client/firefox"  with its binary vari-
ant.  I also tried this with "app-office/libreoffice", but sadly its bi-
nary variant does not support exporting to PDF,  so I humbly returned to
"app-office/libreoffice" which here needs some three hours to build.  If
you don't need this feature, I would recommend using its binary version,
too.  Luckily, I don't have many "Qt" packages as dependencies, the lon-
gest build time of these is about 23 minutes here.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] google SMTP with postfix - Password not accepted

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thelma,

On Monday, 2023-06-19 23:29:52 -0600, you wrote:

> Trying to send email via Google SMTP and postfix but getting authentication 
> failed.
> ...
> The user and password are correct.

Starting at 2022-06-01 Google requires either an application password or
OAuth2 for logging in.  Check the Gentoo archives for a thread with sub-
ject `Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"´ started by me at 2022-03-17.

This thread refers  to an article  on the Web  describing how to support
OAuth2 for Fetchmail and Postfix and also contains a detailed descripti-
on of my personal solution using OAuth2 with neither Fetchmail nor Post-
fix, which still works.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Bespoke terminal font

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Matt,

On Tuesday, 2023-06-06 10:31:01 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> dev-util/otf2bdf is available in the 4nykey repository.

Thanks for the pointer.  And also thanks to Grant  for providing another
pointer.

> media-gfx/psftools is in the gentoo repository as far as I can see.

You are perfectly right  --  I just managed  to mistype "psftools" in my
query :-/

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Bespoke terminal font

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Grant,

On Monday, 5 June 2023 16:51:51 BST you wrote:

> ...
> This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
> TrueType fonts (.ttf) such as DejaVu mono:
> 
> https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

This URL mentions three requirements:

  - bdf2psf
  - otf2bdf
  - psftools

from which only the first  (app-text/bdf2psf)  seems to be  available in
the Gentoo mirror :-(

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Does anyone have Gentoo running on a ThinkPad x13 AMD (Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U)?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Steven,

On Wednesday, 2023-05-24 16:25:05 -0400, you wrote:

> I've re-loaded stage3 adm64 tarballs for a few weeks, keep
> failing due to SIGILL running tar & bzip2.

Commands "bzip2" or "bunzip2" are not made to uncompress "*.xz" files.
According to

   https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Stage

you should just run the command

   tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner

and "tar" will know how to decompress the archive.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Feature "split-log" in Portage variable "FEATURES"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Monday, 2023-05-15 12:58:43 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> Would this make using tab completion easier too?  I ask because when I
> want to cat a error log file, tab completion gets difficult pretty
> quick.

At least the first part --  selecting the  category directory  -- should
become easier,  because the possible completion suggestions only involve
matching categories rather than all installed matching packages.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Feature "split-log" in Portage variable "FEATURES"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Monday, 2023-05-15 11:35:33 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> If you got a minute, what is the reason for split-log?  What exactly
> does it split?  I'm guessing this is new since I don't recall reading
> about it. 

Under Gentoo each package has a name consisting of two parts: "category/
name".  But since under Unix/Linux the "/" is used to separate path com-
ponents,  the build logs in "/var/log/portage/" have sort of ugly names:
"category:name-version:MMDD:HHMMSS.log"  with a colon  rather than a
slash between category and name.  The "split-log" feature now splits the
category to a sub-directory name under "/var/log/portage/build/" and us-
es name, version and time stamp as the log file name.   This enables you
to simply use the full Gentoo package name in scripts as in

   $ pkg=media-gfx/gimp
   $ ls /var/log/portage/build/$pkg-*.log | sort -t : -rk 2,3 | head -1

to get the path to the most recent log file  without first having to re-
place the slash with a colon.

This is probably only relevant if you write your own scripts to get your
tasks done.   And I don't have any idea whether or not it's new,  I just
found it by pure chance when looking for something else ... :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Feature "split-log" in Portage variable "FEATURES"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

On Monday, 2023-05-15 15:39:57 +0200, I myself wrote:

> ...
>After adding "split-log"  to variable
> "FEATURES" in file "make.conf" I updated a single small package, but the
> build log did not turn up anywhere,  even though file  "/var/log/emerge.
> log" contained a new entry telling me  the package has been successfully
> updated.
> 
> What am I missing?

Well I simply missed the "--update" option of the "emerge" command. :-)

Sorry for the noise ...

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Feature "split-log" in Portage variable "FEATURES"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

skimming through "man make.conf"  looking for something else  I stumbled
upon

  split-log
 Store  build   logs   in   category   subdirectories   of
 PORTAGE_LOGDIR/build, instead of using PORTAGE_LOGDIR di‐
 rectly.

and I decided  to give it a try.   After adding "split-log"  to variable
"FEATURES" in file "make.conf" I updated a single small package, but the
build log did not turn up anywhere,  even though file  "/var/log/emerge.
log" contained a new entry telling me  the package has been successfully
updated.

What am I missing?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Load average revisited

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Peter,

On Tuesday, 2023-05-02 15:04:54 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> Meanwhile, is it possible to set things up so that, say, qtwebengine is never 
> compiled at the same time as anything else? I don't want to rely on my 
> noticing and intervening, and besides, it isn't always possible just to
> --exclude it.

What about

   # emerge -1u qtwebengine && emerge -u @world

This will first update any dependencies of "qtwebengine" and only update
"qtwebengine" itself when all its dependencies are dealt with, before it
will deal with the rest.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Can I safely switch (no)multilib profile???

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Netfab,

On Friday, 2023-04-21 19:41:54 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> You should open a bug to explain that ARCH variable is already defined
> in your shell environment. As a consequence the results on the following
> commands are different :

Hm, I'm not at all sure this would qualify as a bug.  A while after hav-
ing traced this problem down, I faintly remembered that in ma early Gen-
too days I had a similar problem with "eix".   In both cases  the depen-
dance on  environment variable "ARCH"  is not documented  in the respec-
tive manual pages,  and therefore  it is in  particular not  pointed out
that Portage is using a different convention from the "arch" command for
naming hardware architectures.

So it's probably not  a bug in the code,  but rather "just" missing pre-
cision in the documentation  -- and my personal experience is  that such
things will hardly ever be corrected,  because the REAL bugs in the code
just have higher priority :-/

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Can I safely switch (no)multilib profile???

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Netfab,

On Friday, 2023-04-21 14:43:32 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> I do not see anything particular in your emerge --info.
> What is your eselect version ?
> > $ eselect --version

   $ eselect --version
   eselect 1.4.20

   Copyright (c) 2005-2020 Gentoo Authors.
   Distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL version 2 or later.
   $

> You can get bash debug output by running the following :
> > $ bash -x /usr/bin/eselect profile list 2> /tmp/debug.log

Oops, I didn't know or expect  "eselect" to be a Bash script.  Otherwise
I would have done this already :-)

I've appended the trace output at the end.   This sure revealed the pro-
blem: skimming upward from the call to "die" in line ">196:" one can see
the script trying in line ">>>129:"  to extract lines matching "^x86_64"
from "/var/db/repos/gentoo/profiles/profiles.desc".   However, there are
none.  Skimming farther upward reveals the string "x86_64" being derived
in line "33:"  from environment variable "ARCH" which  is defined in
my shell initialization scripts:

   export ARCH=$({ arch || uname -m || echo unknown ; } 2> /dev/null)

But the only architectures supported by my "profiles.desc" file are:

   $ gawk '! /^#|^$/ { print $1 }
  ' /var/db/repos/gentoo/profiles/profiles.desc | sort -u
   alpha
   amd64
   amd64-linux
   arm
   arm-linux
   arm64
   arm64-linux
   arm64-macos
   hppa
   ia64
   loong
   m68k
   mips
   ppc
   ppc-macos
   ppc64
   ppc64-linux
   riscv
   riscv-linux
   s390
   sparc
   sparc-solaris
   sparc64-solaris
   x64-cygwin
   x64-macos
   x64-solaris
   x64-winnt
   x86
   x86-linux
   x86-solaris
   x86-winnt
   $

So what is causing this?  Why is environment variable "ARCH" expected to
have a value different from "$(arch)"?  In fact, running

   $ ARCH= eselect profile list
 [1]   default/linux/amd64/17.1 (stable)
 ...
 [35]  default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/hardened/selinux (exp)
   $

succeeds, which is slightly puzzling, at least for me :-/

But if that's the way it has to be, I can live with it by just setting my
"eselect" alias to "eselect='ARCH= eselect --color=no'", which works.

In any case thanks for your time and effort :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

And here's the complete trace output:

   $ PS4='>$LINENO: ' bash -x /usr/bin/eselect profile list
   >20: ESELECT_DATA_PATH=/usr/share/eselect
   >23: ESELECT_DEFAULT_MODULES_PATH=/usr/share/eselect/modules
   >28: ESELECT_MODULES_PATH=("${HOME}/.eselect/modules" 
"${ESELECT_DEFAULT_MODULES_PATH}")
   >31: ESELECT_CORE_PATH=/usr/share/eselect/libs
   >34: ESELECT_DEFAULT_ACTIONS=/usr/share/eselect/libs/default.eselect
   >37: ESELECT_PROGRAM_NAME=eselect
   >38: ESELECT_VERSION=1.4.20
   >41: ESELECT_BINARY_NAME=/usr/bin/eselect
   >42: ESELECT_KILL_TARGET=22018
   >45: EPREFIX=
   >46: EROOT=
   >50: unalias -a
   >51: unset -f rm
   >52: unset CDPATH GLOBIGNORE
   >53: IFS='   
   '
   >55: shopt -s extglob
   >56: shopt -s expand_aliases
   >58: umask +rx
   >61: ((  BASH_VERSINFO[0] == 4 && BASH_VERSINFO[1] >= 1 || BASH_VERSINFO[0] 
> 4  ))
   >63: exec
   >67: source /usr/share/eselect/libs/core.bash
   >69: inherit manip output path-manipulation tests
   >113: local x
   >114: for x in "$@"
   >115: [[ -e /usr/share/eselect/libs/manip.bash ]]
   >117: source /usr/share/eselect/libs/manip.bash
   >114: for x in "$@"
   >115: [[ -e /usr/share/eselect/libs/output.bash ]]
   >117: source /usr/share/eselect/libs/output.bash
   >114: for x in "$@"
   >115: [[ -e /usr/share/eselect/libs/path-manipulation.bash ]]
   >117: source /usr/share/eselect/libs/path-manipulation.bash
   >114: for x in "$@"
   >115: [[ -e /usr/share/eselect/libs/tests.bash ]]
   >117: source /usr/share/eselect/libs/tests.bash
   >73: trap 'echo "exiting" >&2; exit 250' 15
   >111: action=
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >112: for suffix in config update{,r} tool manager reader
   >113: [[ /usr/bin/eselect != \/\u\s\r\/\b\i\n\/\e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >119: unset suffix
   >121: [[ -z '' ]]
   >>122: basename /usr/bin/eselect
   >>22: local path=/usr/bin/eselect suf=
   >>24: [[ -z /usr/bin/eselect ]]
   >>30: path=/usr/bin/eselect
   >>33: path=eselect
   >>36: [[ '' != \e\s\e\l\e\c\t ]]
   >>36: path=eselect
   >>39: echo eselect
   >122: binname=eselect
   >123: for prefix in config update{,r} manage 'read'
   >124: [[ eselect != eselect ]]
   >123: for prefix in 

Re: [gentoo-user] Nvidia-drivers fails to patch

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Thursday, 2023-04-20 17:36:23 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> * Package:    x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-470.182.03:0/470
>  * Repository: mine

Maybe I'm  missing something,  but as of today  "x11-drivers/nvidia-dri-
vers" version 470.182.03 is still in the normal Gentoo tree.  So why use
your personal repo?  Do you have a local patch applied?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Can I safely switch (no)multilib profile???

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Netfab,

On Tuesday, 2023-04-18 19:23:08 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Please post your emerge --info.

$ emerge --info
Portage 3.0.44 (python 3.10.10-final-0, default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop, 
gcc-12, glibc-2.36-r7, 6.1.19-gentoo x86_64)
=
System uname: 
Linux-6.1.19-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i3-6100H_CPU_@_2.70GHz-with-glibc2.36
KiB Mem:16275880 total,  12626132 free
KiB Swap:   16777212 total,  16777212 free
Timestamp of repository gentoo: Tue, 18 Apr 2023 16:02:07 +
Head commit of repository gentoo: 680055829bf8a22bce902578a081df426bfbf1b1

sh bash 5.1_p16-r2
ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.39 p5) 2.39.0
app-misc/pax-utils:1.3.5::gentoo
app-shells/bash:   5.1_p16-r2::gentoo
dev-java/java-config:  2.3.1::gentoo
dev-lang/perl: 5.36.0-r2::gentoo
dev-lang/python:   3.10.10_p3::gentoo, 3.11.2_p2::gentoo
dev-lang/rust-bin: 1.66.1-r1::gentoo
dev-util/cmake:3.25.3::gentoo
dev-util/meson:1.0.1::gentoo
sys-apps/baselayout:   2.13-r1::gentoo
sys-apps/openrc:   0.46::gentoo
sys-apps/sandbox:  2.29::gentoo
sys-devel/autoconf:2.71-r5::gentoo
sys-devel/automake:1.16.5::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils:2.39-r4::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils-config: 5.5::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc: 12.2.1_p20230121-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc-config:  2.10::gentoo
sys-devel/libtool: 2.4.7-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/make:4.3::gentoo
sys-kernel/linux-headers:  6.1::gentoo (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:2.36-r7::gentoo
Repositories:

gentoo
location: /var/db/repos/gentoo
sync-type: git
sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/gentoo
priority: -1000
volatile: True
sync-git-verify-commit-signature: yes

gnu-elpa
location: /var/lib/layman/gnu-elpa
sync-type: laymansync
sync-uri: gs-elpa gnu-elpa
masters: gentoo
priority: 50
volatile: True

melpa
location: /var/lib/layman/melpa
sync-type: laymansync
sync-uri: gs-elpa melpa
masters: gnu-elpa gentoo
priority: 50
volatile: True

melpa-stable
location: /var/lib/layman/melpa-stable
sync-type: laymansync
sync-uri: gs-elpa melpa-stable
masters: gnu-elpa gentoo
priority: 50
volatile: True

local
location: /var/lib/Local-Overlay
masters: gentoo
priority: 1000
volatile: True

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="@FREE"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-fno-diagnostics-color -march=native -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/sofficerc /usr/share/config 
/usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d 
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild 
/etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d 
/etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-fno-diagnostics-color -march=native -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/var/cache/distfiles"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ask --ask-enter-invalid --autounmask=n --color=n 
--nospinner --quiet --quiet-build --quiet-fail --verbose-conflicts"
ENV_UNSET="CARGO_HOME DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY GDK_PIXBUF_MODULE_FILE 
GOBIN GOPATH PERL5LIB PERL5OPT PERLPREFIX PERL_CORE PERL_MB_OPT PERL_MM_OPT 
XAUTHORITY XDG_CACHE_HOME XDG_CONFIG_DIRS XDG_CONFIG_HOME XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP 
XDG_DATA_DIRS XDG_DATA_HOME XDG_RUNTIME_DIR XDG_STATE_HOME XFILESEARCHPATH 
XSESSION XUSERFILESEARCHPATH"
FCFLAGS="-fno-diagnostics-color -march=native -O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-docompress binpkg-dostrip binpkg-logs 
buildpkg-live config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles 
ipc-sandbox merge-sync multilib-strict network-sandbox news parallel-fetch 
pid-sandbox preserve-libs protect-owned qa-unresolved-soname-deps sandbox 
sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch 
userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr"
FFLAGS="-fno-diagnostics-color -march=native -O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="https://ftp.fau.de/gentoo;
LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
LEX="flex"
MAKEOPTS="-j5 -l4.8"
PKGDIR="/var/cache/binpkgs"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times 
--omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats 
--human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local 
--exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
SHELL="/usr/bin/sh"
USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa amd64 bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdda cdr cli 
crypt cups dbus djvu dri dts dvd dvdr elogind encode exif fftw flac fortran 
gdbm gif gnutls gpm gtk gui iconv icu ipv6 jbig jpeg jpeg2k lcms libglvnd 
libnotify libtirpc lzma mad mng modemmanager mp3 mp4 mpeg mtp multilib ncurses 
networkmanager nptl ogg openexr opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf png policykit 
postscript ppds pulseaudio qt5 readline sdl seccomp sound spell 

Re: [gentoo-user] Can I safely switch (no)multilib profile???

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Netfab,

On Monday, 2023-04-17 13:49:57 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Is the following file readable ?
> 
> > $ ls -l $(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo)/profiles/profiles.desc

Yes:

   $ ls -l $(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo)/profiles/profiles.desc
   -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20443 2023-03-24 15:05 
/var/db/repos/gentoo/profiles/profiles.desc
   $ grep default/linux/amd64 $(portageq get_repo_path / 
gentoo)/profiles/profiles.desc
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/selinux
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened   
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened/selinux   
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome  
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome/systemd  
stable
   amd64
default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome/systemd/merged-usr   stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma 
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd 
stable
   amd64
default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd/merged-usr  stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/systemd
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/systemd/merged-usr 
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/developer  
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/hardened   
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/hardened/selinux   
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/systemd
dev
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/systemd/merged-usr 
dev
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/systemd/selinux
exp
   amd64
default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/systemd/selinux/merged-usr exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd/merged-usr 
stable
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd/selinux
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd/selinux/merged-usr 
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/clang  
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd/clang  
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd/clang/merged-usr   
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/x32
dev
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/x32/systemd
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/x32/systemd/merged-usr 
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl   
dev
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/clang 
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/hardened  
exp
   amd64default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/hardened/selinux  
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-3.2+ 
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-2.6.32+  
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-2.6.16+  
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-3.2+ 
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-2.6.32+  
exp
   amd64-linux  default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/prefix/kernel-2.6.16+  
exp
   $

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] updating /boot directory EFI

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Mitch,

On Monday, 2023-04-17 08:15:51 -0400, you wrote:

> I just took a quick glance at the ebuild, and it looks like it should print
> a reminder ("Re-run grub-install to update installed boot code!") every
> time you upgrade from an older version to a newer one, but it also looks
> like the reminder gets skipped if you're re-emerging the same version.
> 
> https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/sys-boot/grub/grub-2.06-r4.ebuild#n314

Thankyou very much for this information.   But is there anyone out there
who skims through  tons of SUCCESSFUL emerge log files  after every rou-
tine upgrade?   Personally,  I only check the logs in case of build fai-
lures or conflicts.

By the way, I only see this message in the build logs for versions 2.06-
r4 and 2.06-r6, but not in older logs.  So maybe that's a rather new ad-
dition to the ebuild file?

Since I do my routine upgrades  via a script anyway,  I now retrieve the
name of the most recent  Grub build log  before I really  start "emerge"
and after "emerge" finished,  and if the two names differ  and the newer
file contains this "Re-run ..." message,  I now run  "grub-install" from
within this script.  Problem solved.

But I have the vague feeling there should be a more foolproof solution.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Can I safely switch (no)multilib profile???

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Sunday, 2023-04-16 18:56:35 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 01:29:46AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote
> >   When I installed Gentoo on my desktop PC, I could've sworn that I
> > selected...
> > 
> > [15]  default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib (stable)
> > 
> > ...as the profile.  ***THINGS HAVE BEEN WORKING FINE FOR A COUPLE OF
> > YEARS.***

Walter's problems triggered me  to check what profile was selected on my
own rig:

   # eselect profile show
   Current /etc/portage/make.profile symlink:
 default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop
   # eselect profile list
   !!! Error: Failed to get a list of valid profiles
   exiting
   #

Anybody having an explanation?  What to check?

Any pointers welcome ...

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] updating /boot directory EFI

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Mitch,

On Sunday, 2023-04-16 07:16:09 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> "grub-install" copies Grub from your Gentoo installation to your hard drive
> / SSD / etc. This has nothing to do with your kernel, it only involves
> Grub. Rerun this command when you emerge updates to Grub.

Is this really necessary to be done manually?  Shouldn't this be the job
of the Grub ebuild?   My gut feeling is that having to look out for Grub
updates and then to manually run "grub-install" every time is not really
Gentoo-like ...

To be honest,  I've run this  command once during  my initial Gentoo in-
stall three and a half years back, but never since.  And according to my
logs I've since then upgraded Grub ten times  and rebuilt it four times.
Should I worry?  Can this be automated?

> ...
> NOTE: if I remember correctly, there are USE flags that can be enabled to
> automatically run grub-install and grub-mkconfig when updates are installed
> for Grub and for kernels, respectively.

Checking the USE flags  for Grub and Portage  I didn't find anything for
automatically running "grub-install".  Where else to look?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Converting shell globs to regular expressions

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

does anybody know about some command to convert shell globs  (shell pat-
terns) into regular expressions?   Back in the old Unix days there was a
"glob" command, but "e-files" only turns up a GNU library.

I am aware  of Python's  "fnmatch.translate()" function,  but this -- of
course -- returns a  Python style  regular expression  which I can't use
together with  "grep" or "gawk".   So using this function  would require
moving and converting the "grep" and "gawk" specific code  from my Shell
script into a separate Python script.   This would be doable,  if neces-
sary, but I would prefer staying with just my Shell script.

Any pointers heartily welcome :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] emerge -U or emerge -N

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Tuesday, 2023-04-11 08:19:10 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> So now we kn ow, ChatGPT is case-insensitive, it gave you answers for -u
> and -n.

You aren't really flabbergasted, are you?   After all Microsoft is known
for having a particularly soft spot for case-insensitiveness :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] config file '/etc/mtab' needs updating

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Peter,

On Tuesday, 2023-04-11 11:19:31 +0100, you wrote:

> On Tuesday, 11 April 2023 06:44:03 BST the...@sys-concept.com wrote:
> > After update I get:
> > * IMPORTANT: config file '/etc/mtab' needs updating.
> > ...

> /etc/mtab should be a symlink to /proc/self/mounts, so it ought to be kept up 
> to date by the kernel as required.

If I remember correctly,  recently the symlink target was subtly changed
from "/proc/self/mounts" to "../proc/self/mounts",  thus unconditionally
referring to a target on the same volume.

That's probably the reason for the warning thelma got.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Bouncing messages

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Grant,

On Thursday, 2023-01-19 22:59:48 -0700, you wrote:

> ...
> I tried it a few times.
> 
> I'd see mail log entries where the re-sent messages would fail the same 
> way that the original sent message failed.  :-/

Me too :-(

But isn't this changeable?   It's a list maintained by Gentoo.Org, after
all.  Gentoo is famous for its customizability,  but the organization of
its mailing lists is not adaptable to new requirements?  Does this mail-
ing software run under Windows?

Either these  mail identification numbers  should be somehow visible and
in particular searchable at

   https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/

or the mail that some mail couldn't be delivered should contain more in-
formation like author, date and subject.

DOES REALLY NOBODY CARE?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Thunderbird build failure ..

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Cal,

On Sunday, 2023-01-01 13:21:34 -0800, you wrote:

> ...
> You're right, it looks like the Thunderbird ebuild has a clang USE
> turned on by default;

On my rig "clang" and "llvm" used about 90 minutes each to build and af-
terwards often caused rebuilds for other packages which, too, took their
time.

So eventually I added "-clang -llvm"  to my global "USE" variable,  thus
not only saving plenty of compile time but aparently also avoiding plen-
ty of problems ...

Sincerely,
  Rainer

PS: Happy New Year to all list members :-)

[gentoo-user] [SOLVED] Re: Clock font in "xfce-base/xfce4-panel" version 4.17.4

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Tuesday, 2022-11-29 17:03:18 +0100, I myself wrote:

> ...
> after upgrading "xfce-base/xfce4-panel" from version 4.17.3 to 4.17.4 my
> digital clock uses a tiny font which I cannot change.  Whatever font and
> font size I select  in its "Property" dialog is ignored.   It stubbornly
> stays with "Sans Regular 8 px".

OMG: I simply ignored the "Select" button  in the upper right corner and
always just clicked on the "Close" button in the lower right corner :-(

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Clock font in "xfce-base/xfce4-panel" version 4.17.4

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

after upgrading "xfce-base/xfce4-panel" from version 4.17.3 to 4.17.4 my
digital clock uses a tiny font which I cannot change.  Whatever font and
font size I select  in its "Property" dialog is ignored.   It stubbornly
stays with "Sans Regular 8 px".

Searching the web did not turn up anything relevant and new.  Is anybody
else using the digital clock in "xfce4-panel"?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Joining PDFs and/or jpegs together. Help, please!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Alan,

On Friday, 2022-11-25 16:40:11 +, you wrote:

> ...
> I have a problem, in that I need to join several PDFs or jpegs output
> from xsane (the scanner program) into a single document.

For joining PDFs I use "pdftk" from "app-text/pdftk".

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Libsld, what gives?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Paul,

On Thursday, 2022-11-17 17:52:17 +1100, you wrote:

> On Wednesday, November 16, 2022 6:11:18 P.M. AEDT Alan Grimes wrote:
> > ...
> >Usually I should wait six months just to save myself
> > the aggrivation...
> 
> No, waiting 6 months between updates *causes* aggrivation.

The last word you're using here was originally coined by Allan.  Since I
didn't find it in my dictionary, I assume it doesn't exist.   So I would
suggest using either "aggravation" or "aggrievation", another word I did
not find in my dictionary, but which seems to fit even better ... :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Upgrading from 5.14 to 6.0 version

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Friday, 2022-11-11 13:18:08 -0600, you wrote:

> ...
> I did build a new kernel from the old config and running make
> oldconfig.

Perhaps you should rather use

   make olddefconfig

It tries not to just ignore any newly introduced configuration variables
but rather to provide meaningful defaults for them.

Sincerely
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] How to disable the modules service?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Peter,

On Sunday, 2022-10-23 12:45:42 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> we have a wiki article for this:
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Kernel_Modules#Going_completely_.22module-less.22

When I built my first Gentoo system in 2019,  the Handbook instructed to
build anything sound related  as modules,  if I remember correctly.   Is
this no longer true?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Package "app-office/libreoffice-bin"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

after it took about three hours  to build "app-office/libreoffice" on my
laptop,  I decided to pull the plug and install "app-office/libreoffice-
bin" instead.  Installing this one only took some two minutes, and I was
happy.

But today I noticed that "app-office/libreoffice-bin" only provides some
sort of light version without PDF support,  while I had compiled package
"app-office/libreoffice" with (among other things) USE flag "pdfimport".

Back to three hours build time?  Or is there some overlay out there pro-
viding a more complete "app-office/libreoffice-bin" package?

Any pointers welcome :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[ME TOO] Re: [gentoo-user] --sync

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Sunday, 2022-07-31 21:43:12 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> I switched to using git for syncing, from github, and haven't looked
> back. It is *much* faster, several times faster syncing from github than
> using rsync to sync from a local mirror, and github is always there.

The replies from you and some other people suggesting the use of Git for
syncing and providing howtos  were the straw that broke the camel's back
and overcame my lazyness.   So I too switched to Git and now am as happy
as can be :-D

Many thanks for this tip :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] GPG problem

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

xWK,

On Sunday, 2022-07-10 10:56:18 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> There are however some version differences between FreeBSD and Gentoo.
> 
> FreeBSD:
> $ gpg --version
> gpg (gnuPG) 2.3.3
> libgcrypt 1.9.4
> Copyright (c) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> 
> 
> Gentoo:
> $ gpg --version
> gpg (GnuPG) 2.2.35
> libgcrypt 1.9.4-unknown
> Copyright (C) 2022 g10 Code GmbH

Gentoo provides non-stable version 2.3.6-r1.  Maybe this could help?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] google-chrome-103.0.5060 - choose password for new keyring

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thelma,

On Friday, 2022-07-08 10:20:12 -0600, you wrote:

> ...
> app-crypt/libsecret-0.20.5-r3 pulled in by:
>  app-crypt/gcr-3.41.0 requires >=app-crypt/libsecret-0.20
> 
> And "app-crypt/gcr" was an upgrade.

This does not happen  with the stable version 3.40.0 of "app-crypt/gcr",
only with the  non-stable version 3.41.0  which has this additional dep-
endency.   But then, as soon as 3.41.0 will become stable you'd have the
same problem.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] google-chrome-103.0.5060 - choose password for new keyring

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thelma,

On Thursday, 2022-07-07 23:13:47 -0600, the...@sys-concept.com wrote:

> ...
> By upgrading one of my system, I've just noticed this behaviour is enforced 
> (I think) by new package that was pulled by emerge:
> [ebuild  N] gnome-base/gnome-keyring-42.1  USE="pam ssh-agent (-selinux) 
> -systemd -test"
> Upgrading just "chrome" did not ask me for any keyring password.
> 
> I don't use gnome, I use XFCE but I guess one of the package pull this as a 
> dependency.

Run

   $ emerge --pretend --unmerge gnome-base/gnome-keyring

to get  the list  of packages  depending on  "gnome-base/gnome-keyring".
Then check  each of  these packages  for a set USE flag  causing "gnome-
base/gnome-keyring" to be pulled in.   At least in many cases such a USE
flag will be named just "gnome-keyring".

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] pain, PAIN, and more pain again.

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Alan,

On Saturday, 2022-06-18 23:54:26 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> At this point in time, if you have a problem, especially on linux, it is
> almost never the problem that existed before a penguin tried to solve it
> for you.

Perhaps Ubuntu would be your friend?

> ...
> Example:
> 
> Old way:
> 
> "My boot drive is plugged into this port on the motherboard"
> 
> New way:
> 
> Spend hours figuring out what your UUID is, create a physical pocket
> folder (which you will subsequently have to store and manage) with the
> UUID which is long and complex and copy it by hand, very carefully, then
> set that up in your mtab

Old way:

Write a message on parchment,  roll the parchment up  and seal it,  then
hand it to your most reliable friend who will mount his fastest mare and
ride off ...

That's as reliable as your best friend and as fast as his fastest mare.

New way:

Fire up a computer,  open a mail application with an awkward user inter-
face,  write a mail using a sloppy keyboard,  thus introducing plenty of
typos (including in the receiver's  email address),  above all depend on
misconfigured name servers,  mail servers,  power stations, you-name-it,
and eventually get back a non-delivery-notice ...

That's as unreliable as it can be.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Google pop3 authentication failure

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Tuesday, 2022-06-14 15:20:36 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> >https://getmail6.org/configuration.html#configuring
> 
> Good point, it's that long since I set up getmail, I had to check if it
> was using IMAP or POP, and I'm using it with IMAP. Is there a reason you
> can't or won't use IMAP?

Well, the reason for using "fetchmail" at all is probably historical: It
was the only available mail retrieval utility  on Sun's Solaris way back
in time.   I am used to (and sort of depend on) running "fetchmail" as a
daemon as well as using the "dropdelivered" directive provided by it for
POP3 which causes fetched mail to be deleted on the server.

But I've meanwhile seen  that "getmail" provides the  "--delete" command
line option for that.   And regarding the daemon mode  I could whip up a
shell script which runs "getmail" together with  a "sleep 60" command in
an infinite loop.  So I could probably give it a try.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Google pop3 authentication failure

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Monday, 2022-06-13 20:20:46 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> > Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides daem-
> > on mode as well as  POP and  OAuth support,  and also allows to directly
> > feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?
> 
> net-mail/getmail

Do you know for sure?   As mentioned in my original mail I was under the
impression that OAuth is only available  together with IMAP but not with
POP3.  See

   https://getmail6.org/configuration.html#configuring

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Google pop3 authentication failure

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Walter,

On Monday, 2022-06-13 09:42:39 -0400, you wrote:

>   I started getting this today.
> 
> fetchmail: Authorization failure on @pop.gmail.com
> fetchmail: For help, see http://www.fetchmail.info/fetchmail-FAQ.html#R15
> fetchmail: Query status=3 (AUTHFAIL)

See the thread with subject 'Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"' between
2022-03-17 and 2022-04-06 on the "gentoo-user" mailing list.

There's one big gotcha though:  shortly before Google's 2022-05-30 dead-
line for the switch to two-factor-authorization,  the upstream maintain-
ers of "fetchmail" decided to abandon the 7.0.0 release  (coincidence?),
causing the Gentoo maintainers to also drop "fetchmail-7.0.0" from Port-
age.

I ended up cloning the "git" source repository from

   https://gitlab.com/fetchmail/fetchmail.git

checking out branch "remote/next", and then running

   export PREFIX=$HOME
   ./autogen.sh
   ./configure --disable-IMAP --mandir=$PREFIX/man
   make install

which installs the man pages  "~/man/man1/fetchmail.1"  and "~/man/man1/
fetchmailconf.1" as well as the programmes "~/bin/fetchmail" and "~/bin/
fetchmailconf" in my home directory.

But I think this will be only a temporary solution due to lacking maint-
enance upstream.   Looking around a bit I found "getmail" in the Portage
repository which supports OAuth,  but apparently only for IMAP.  Bummer.

Anybody knowing about a replacement for "fetchmail" which provides daem-
on mode as well as  POP and  OAuth support,  and also allows to directly
feed the fetched mails into "procmail"?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[SOLVED] Re: [gentoo-user] Failing to emerge "sys-apps/fwupd-1.8.1"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Arve,

On Thursday, 2022-06-02 17:46:14 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> According to https://bugs.gentoo.org/841767 this could possibly be fixed
> for you by either activating the gusb USE flag, or de-activating the
> modemmanager USE flag.

Bingo!  Activating the "gusb" USE flag did the trick!  Many thanks :-D

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] error in /etc/portage/make.conf file

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Jude,

On Friday, 2022-04-15 09:58:40 -0400, you wrote:

> after the  LC_MESSAGES=C
> line, caught signal 2 exiting gets printed in the file.

Try LC_MESSAGES="C"

This is most probably read by Python rather than by a Shell.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: [SOLVED] Footer line with LibreOffice's Calc?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dan,

On Sunday, 2022-04-10 13:06:46 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> In LO-Calc:
> 
> Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice Calc -> General -> Input Settings -> "Expand 
> references when new columns/rows are inserted"

Oops ... let me politely put it this way: apparently it was too late and
I was too tired yesterday to see the obvious :-/

To summ it up: the option is not only there but also solves my problem.

Many thanks to the responders :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Footer line with LibreOffice's Calc?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Stefan,

On Saturday, 2022-04-09 18:46:00 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Excel automatically adjusts the formular to include the newly added line,
> while LibreCalc does not ... by default. However, there is
> a setting (Extras -> Optionen -> LibreOffice Calc -> Allgemein -> 
> Eingabe-Einstellungen)
> called "Bezüge beim Einfügen von Zeilen/Spalten an deren Rändern ausdehnen",
> which does the trick.

Thanks for the quick response.  However, I can nowhere find anything re-
sembling this sequence of sub-menus  (apart from the LibreOffice I'm us-
ing is talking English).  When I just enter "libreoffice" on the command
line, the list of pull-down menus  is "File Tools Help",  and when I run
"libreoffice --calc"  the list of pull-down menus is "File Edit View In-
sert Format Styles Sheet Data Tools Window Help".   But up to now  I did
not find anything  in the various cascaded sub-menus  which would trans-
late to "Eingabe-Einstellungen".

In case it matters: "libreoffice --version" returns "LibreOffice 7.2.6.2
20(Build:2)" here, and this is the USE string returned by "eix":

   USE: bluetooth branding cups dbus gtk mariadb pdfimport postgres
-accessibility -base -clang -coinmp -custom-cflags -debug -eds
-firebird -googledrive -gstreamer -java -kde -ldap -odk -test
-vulkan
LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="-nlpsolver -scripting-beanshell
-scripting-javascript -wiki-publisher"
PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_9 -python3_8 -python3_10"

Am I missing some USE flag?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Footer line with LibreOffice's Calc?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

are there any LibreOffice Calc experts on this list?

I have some "*.xlsx" files  which were created with Excel under Windows.
These feature a "footer" line,  which for instance  compute the sums for
various columns.   If you use Excel under Windows  and insert  a new row
before this footer line, the sum in the footer line will be updated acc-
ordingly.  Using "Calc" this line is a normal line, and inserting anoth-
er line before it does NOT adjust the row numbers in its formulas.

Googling for "libreoffice calc footer"  pointed me to clicking on "Head-
ers and Footers" in the "Insert" pulldown menu.  However, this is greyed
out.   Do I need special USE flags to activate that?   Or are ther other
methods to update the formulas in a row when another row is inserted be-
fore it?

Any help appreciated :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] [SOLVED] Re: Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Friday, 2022-03-18 11:50:33 +0100, I myself wrote:

> Nikos,
> 
> On Thursday, 2022-03-17 19:04:04 +0200, you wrote:
> 
> > ...
> > http://mmogilvi.users.sourceforge.net/software/oauthbearer.html
> > ...
> 
> Really interesting reading.  Thanks for the pointer.  And also thanks to
> the other responders.

Matthew Ogilvie's write-up at the above URL was not only interesting but
also extremely helpful.  It basically covers four points:

1. Background information on OAuth 2.

2. A how-to about setting up one's Google mail account for OAuth 2 and a
   Python script (requiring a small configuration file),  which gets you
   your first two OAuth tokens: an "access token" which has to be passed
   to Google as a password,  but which has only a life time of 60 minut-
   es, and a "refresh token" which is valid until you change your Google
   password or maybe also  until Google decides  enough being enough and
   starts rejecting your refresh requests with  "HTTP Error 400: Bad Re-
   quest" messages  which you'll find at the bottom of the Python trace-
   back from  Matthew's script.   As long as the  refresh token is valid
   you will have to use this script on a rather regular basis to get new
   valid access tokens.

3. Gentoo-ready patches for "net-mail/fetchmail"  up to at least version
   6.4.13 which however will only support IMAP and will not work in dae-
   mon mode, thus requiring a "cron" job for fetching mail.

   Matthew also points out  that Gentoo offers a still masked "net-mail/
   fetchmail" version 7.0.0_alpha9-r1  which supports OAuth 2, POP3, and
   daemon mode.

4. A description how to tweak "mail-mta/postfix" so it supports OAuth 2.
   This involves installing a "cyrus-sasl-xoauth2" plugin  not available
   in the Gentoo repository,  a complex configuration setup  for a full-
   fledged MTA which above all is dynamically changing (at least, if you
   want to handle outgoing mail for more than one user),  special "sudo-
   ers" rules for these mailing users,  and "cron" jobs  to periodically
   send their mail off to their Google accounts.

Following part 2 of this guide I soon had my Google account OAuth-ready.
The Python script from Matthew requires a configuration file the path to
which has to be  explicitly specified  in every call.   My configuration
file resides at "~/.../oauth.cfg" and contains:

client_id=...
client_secret=...
access_token_file=/home/rainer/.../oauth-access-token
refresh_token_file=/home/rainer/.../oauth-refresh-token
max_age_sec=1800

The first two lines  specify the Google project  just created,  the next
two lines define  the absolute paths  to the two token files to be used,
and the last line sets the access token age  before which the token will
not be renewed.  DO NOT try to add empty or comment lines to this file!

Regarding the adaption of "fetchmail"  in part 3  I opted for installing
version 7.0.0_alpha9-r1,  since I was used to  POP3 and daemon mode [1].
Version 7 is still masked,  so to be able  to emerge it  execute (in the
first "echo" command replace "amd64" with YOUR architecture):

   # mkdir -p /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
   # echo '>=net-mail/fetchmail-7.0.0_alpha9-r1 ~amd64' \
   >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/Oauth
   # mkdir -p /etc/portage/package.unmask
   # echo '>=net-mail/fetchmail-7.0.0_alpha9-r1' \
   >> /etc/portage/package.unmask/OAuth

[1] If you do not like  installing an  alpha-version,  want to use POP3,
but do not insist on daemon mode, I've meanwhile found out that Gen-
too also provides a package "net-mail/mpop"  from the same author as
the MTA I decided to install instead of "mail-mta/postfix".   Howev-
er,  Gentoo-wise this package is almost two years behind  due to the
lack of a Gentoo maintainer, so you might want to install it direct-
ly from

   https://marlam.de/mpop/

Of course the new "fetchmail" version  also introduced new configuration
items.  Here is my new "~/.fetchmailrc" file (the "authenticate" direct-
ive as well as the last three lines are new):

setdaemon 60
setinvisible
set no syslog

poll  pop.gmail.com
protocol  POP3
service   995
authenticate  oauthbearer

username  "rainer.woi...@gmail.com"
dropdelivered
fetchall
no keep
mda   "/usr/bin/procmail -pf %F"
passwordfile  "/home/rainer/.../oauth-access-token"
sslmode   wrapped
sslcertck

Even though I run  "fetchmail" in daemon mode,  it's not running all the
time.  It's started once when I log in, but my backup script which I use
at least once a day will again terminate it  before doing anything else,
so my mailbox will never change  between my last backup  and hibernating
my laptop.

And yes,  I almost never shutdown my laptop,  but rather suspend or hib-
ernate it.  Thus I'll possibly need a fresh access token when I manually
start "fetchmail",  but it's not necessary  to repeatedly  update it via
"cron" while "fetchmail" isn't running at 

[gentoo-user] Re: Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Nikos,

On Thursday, 2022-03-17 19:04:04 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> I don't use fetchmail (just an email client), but fetchmail 7 apparently 
> supports oauth2. It's masked in portage because it's still alpha 
> (net-mail/fetchmail-7.0.0_alpha9-r1).
> 
> And then read:
> 
> http://mmogilvi.users.sourceforge.net/software/oauthbearer.html
> 
> Which also seems to contain Gentoo instructions. Apparently, you don't 
> need to apply the patches for fetchmail 6 if you instead unmask and 
> emerge the 7.0.0 alpha version.

Really interesting reading.  Thanks for the pointer.  And also thanks to
the other responders.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Google and "fetchmail" + "ssmtp"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

since quite some time,  longe before  "converting" to Gentoo,  I've used
"fetchmail" and "ssmtp" to retrieve and send mail via my Google account.

Some time after I had all set up,  Google started nagging  about my not-
so-secure access to my mail account via just userid and password.  Up to
now I simply ignored that.   But now Google told me  to only allow "Sign
in with Google" or OAuth 2.0 after 2022-05-30.

I've seen quite a few people with "@gmail" or "@googlemail" addresses on
this list, so others might have a similar problem,  but maybe nobody but
me is using this Google + "fetchmail" + "ssmtp" combination.   Any ideas
how to get OAuth into this set-up?

If it helps, here are the relevant configuration files:

 ~/.fetchmailrc 

poll pop.gmail.com
protoPOP3
service  995
user rainer.woi...@googlemail.com
dropdelivered
fetchall
no keep
mda  '/usr/bin/procmail -pf %F'
pass **
ssl

 /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf -

mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
FromLineOverride=YES
hostname=tux
rewriteDomain=Gmail.Com
root=rainer.woi...@gmail.com
UseSTARTTLS=YES
AuthUser=rainer.woi...@googlemail.com
AuthPass=**

-End --

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] [NOTABUG] Re: Root can't write to files owned by others?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Wednesday, 2022-03-09 19:28:49 +0100, I myself wrote:

> ...
> until recently my system behaves sort of strangely:
> 
>$ touch /tmp/file
>$ ls -l /tmp/file
>-rw--- 1 rainer rainer 0 2022-03-09 19:06 /tmp/file
>$ echo x | sudo tee /tmp/file
>Password: 
>tee: /tmp/file: Permission denied
>x
>$ chmod a+w /tmp/file
>$ ls -l /tmp/file
>-rw--w--w- 1 rainer rainer 0 2022-03-09 19:06 /tmp/file
>$ echo x | sudo tee /tmp/file
>tee: /tmp/file: Permission denied
>x
>$
> 
> Since when can't root write to files  it doesn't own?   And not even, if
> the file has write permission for everybody?

Turns out it's not a bug but a feature,  more precisely a security feat-
ure.  Its purpose is  to prevent an unprivileged  local user from luring
user "root" into  writing possibly  sensitive information  to an already
existing file owned by and thus accessible to the local attacker.

This protection feature was introduced  as an option deactivated by def-
ault way back in some 4.* kernel,  and somewhere between kernels 5.15.19
and 5.15.26 the default was changed to on.

If you want or have to,  you can again disable  this feature  at runtime
using

   # sysctl fs.protected_regular=0

or permanently from the next boot onwards via

   # echo fs.protected_regular = 0 >> /etc/sysctl.d/local.conf

Personally, I've decided to again boot kernel 5.15.26,  to leave the new
default setting  (even on my laptop),  and to adapt  my script which had
problems with this new behaviour accordingly.

Your milage may vary.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Root can't write to files owned by others?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Aho,

On Friday, 2022-03-11 10:17:13 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> I think Rainer's problem is the nosuid mount flag on his /tmp
> 
> $ mount | grep \/tmp
> tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,size=3212160k,inode64)
> 
> So if he would run the command against a file not located in /tmp I 
> think it would work, at least it does for me as it's only /tmp that has 
> nosuid.

No.   My "/tmp/" directory  is not mounted at all,  it is just a genuine
directory in "/".   And that root CAN overwrite a file it doesn't own in
other directories, is due to most directories  not having the sticky bit
set  (which is a  (wanted) particularity  of "/tmp/" and "/var/tmp/", in
that it prevents normal users from (re)moving other people's files):

   $ ls -ld / /tmp /var/tmp
   drwxr-xr-x 21 root root  4096 2021-01-25 12:17 /
   drwxrwxrwt 10 root root 69632 2022-03-11 12:16 /tmp
   drwxrwxrwt  3 root root  4096 2022-03-10 10:23 /var/tmp
   $
^
This "t" indicates a set sticky bit.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Root can't write to files owned by others?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Nikos,

On Thursday, 2022-03-10 12:21:36 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Are you sure that:
> 
> sysctl fs.protected_regular=0
> 
> does not help? I can reproduce it here on my system with kernel 5.15.27, 
> and setting that sysctl to 0 fixes it immediately.

No,  I'm not at all sure.   Since you mentioned  in your first mail that
this is normal  when using  "systemd",  I did not pursue  this route any
further, because I'm using "openrc".

I'll search the web for "fs.protected_regular"  to get a feeling for the
consequences and then perhaps set this when I'll again boot kernel vers-
ion 5.15.26.

Thanks for being persistent :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Re: Root can't write to files owned by others?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Wednesday, 2022-03-09 19:28:49 +0100, I myself wrote:

> ...
>$ touch /tmp/file
>$ ls -l /tmp/file
>-rw--- 1 rainer rainer 0 2022-03-09 19:06 /tmp/file
>$ echo x | sudo tee /tmp/file
>Password: 
>tee: /tmp/file: Permission denied
>x
>$ ...
>$

Big thanks to all kind people making suggestions.  But up to now nothing
helped.

> ...
> When I'll have time to reboot,  I'll test the  above commands  on my old
> kernel, 5.15.19.

Surprisingly,  this did in fact help.   My rig is back  to normal behav-
iour! :-O

For what it's worth,  these were  the only kernel  configuration changes
when building kernel 5.15.26 while running kernel 5.15.19 using

   # make olddefconfig

   -CONFIG_CC_VERSION_TEXT="gcc (Gentoo 11.2.0 p1) 11.2.0"
   +CONFIG_CC_VERSION_TEXT="gcc (Gentoo 11.2.1_p20220115 p4) 11.2.1 20220115"
   -CONFIG_GCC_VERSION=110200
   +CONFIG_GCC_VERSION=110201
   +# CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_LEGACY_ACCELERATION is not set

So again: what am I missing?  For the time being I'll stay with this old
kernel version, even though it's no longer available upstream.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Root can't write to files owned by others?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

until recently my system behaves sort of strangely:

   $ touch /tmp/file
   $ ls -l /tmp/file
   -rw--- 1 rainer rainer 0 2022-03-09 19:06 /tmp/file
   $ echo x | sudo tee /tmp/file
   Password: 
   tee: /tmp/file: Permission denied
   x
   $ chmod a+w /tmp/file
   $ ls -l /tmp/file
   -rw--w--w- 1 rainer rainer 0 2022-03-09 19:06 /tmp/file
   $ echo x | sudo tee /tmp/file
   tee: /tmp/file: Permission denied
   x
   $

Since when can't root write to files  it doesn't own?   And not even, if
the file has write permission for everybody?

This worked as long as I can think of.  My last routine upgrade install-
ed new  kernel package  "sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-5.15.26",  so I built
the new kernel and booted from it.  May this be the reason?

When I'll have time to reboot,  I'll test the  above commands  on my old
kernel, 5.15.19.  But perhaps there's another reason?

Slightly puzzled
 Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Piping "emerge -a" to some other command

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Arve,

On Friday, 2022-02-25 10:15:18 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> I'm guessing any proposed solution would fail when what you want to
> capture has an interactive component like this.

I think "fail" is the wrong word here.   My own scripts send such quest-
ions to the same device  they retrieve the answer from ("/dev/tty" in my
case).   So both, question and answer would be missing from the log file
produced by "tee", but they would appear on the screen, which seems more
important to me.

But you are right in that it would at least be difficult to have them in
both places.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Piping "emerge -a" to some other command

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

John,

On Thursday, 2022-02-24 09:59:50 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> I use script for that purpose and it works great, the output is
> complete and I can just say no and its all  there.

Nice idea.   However, I'd like to keep things as simple as possible, be-
cause an important usecase for me is  installing a new  or fixing an ex-
isting system after booting from a USB stick.  The "script" binary is in
package "sys-apps/util-linux"  which belongs to "@system",  so it SHOULD
be on my USB stick.   Like "cmp" and "diff" from package "sys-apps/diff-
utils" which belong to "@system" too, but which were NOT on my USB stick
when I used it to install my current system about three years ago, or at
least they were not in "PATH"  (I then didn't frantically need these, so
I didn't really search for them).

I do not know what "nano"  (the only editor then available) will do with
all the control characters in the  "script" output file,  and "scriptre-
play" doesn't seem to offer any interactive control.  I do have a "gawk"
based shell function  which turns a  "script" output file  into a normal
text file containing command log + standard output + standard error sans
any control characters, but this will not yet be available in that situ-
ation.

So I'm still preferring "tee" here which definitely WAS on my USB stick.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Piping "emerge -a" to some other command

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Rich,

On Thursday, 2022-02-24 07:10:10 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> Wouldn't it be more appropriate to use -p in this case, which will
> require no input?

Running "emerge -p ..."  followed by "emerge ..." without "-p" would run
the dependency analysis twice for EVERY package update.   Using a single
"emerge -a" call  will run the dependency analysis  only once for almost
each package update.  The option to say "N" and further inspect the "em-
erge" output using an editor  is meant as sort of a safety belt which is
not intended to be used on a daily basis.

> I haven't dug into the man page, but I'm sure there are also options
> that are more intended to make the output more suitable for
> parsing/etc.

A quick search in the "emerge" manual page  for "pars" and "pip" did not
turn up anything I considered relevant.  Can anyone give more hints?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Piping "emerge -a" to some other command

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

since the output of "emerge -a" might be long, and since on a stock con-
sole you cannot scroll,  I had the idea of piping it into "tee",  and in
case I'm unsure  just to say  "No"  to the question  of whether or not I
would like to merge these packages and then to inspect the "emerge" out-
put more closely using an editor.

Sadly, however, this works only partly:

   $ sudo emerge -1a acct-group/abrt | tee
   Password: 

   These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

   Calculating dependencies  ... done!
   [ebuild  N ] acct-group/abrt-0-r1 

And that's it, however long you're going to wait here.  You can then
blindly say "No", and "tee" will continue its output:

   Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No] 
   Quitting.

   $

Replacing "tee" with "more" does not change anything, so most likely the
culprit is "emerge" itself, which seems to instantly block standard out-
put after it has sent its question there.

So, is this a bug or a feature?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Options for "emerge"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thanks, Michael,

On Tuesday, 2022-02-22 10:05:06 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> It's really a (portage-only) workaround for developers who don't follow
> the rules, thus ensuring that we'll never have another competing
> package manager again.

So for people like me,  neither being  a developer  nor managing a local
server for binary packages (thanks Andreas for pointing out this special
case), "--changed-deps" really is an option not to be used.

Case finally closed :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Options for "emerge"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Er ...

On Monday, 2022-02-21 11:13:16 +0100, I myself wrote:

> ...
> But what
> about "--changed-deps"?   Can nobody on this list explain what it really
> is or isn't good for, or when to use or not to use it?

Apart from  a reply by Dale  which more or less confirmed  (at least the
way I read it) that the section regarding the "--changed-deps" option in
"man emerge"  does not contain  much valuable information,  there was no
response whatsoever, not even from the "gentoo.org" folks on this list!

And none of the examples to overcome problems provided by others in this
thread ever contained "--changed-deps".  Does this mean "--changed-deps"
is a NOOP, a relict from days long gone by, meanwhile without any funct-
ionality,  just provided for compatibility in order to not break ancient
scripts?

If so, I think the manual page could frankly point that out.

If not so, where could I look-up the relevant information, short of the
source code?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Options for "emerge"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Wol,

On Sunday, 2022-02-20 14:56:20 +, you wrote:

> ...
>But --deep - that's to do 
> with a dependency changing USE flags, and it will block a depclean if 
> you don't do it.

Thanks for the reminder!  This is in fact mentioned in every output from
"emerge --depclean" and thus develops a high probability of being ignor-
ed ... :-)

So my script will keep "--deep" when "--update" is specified.   But what
about "--changed-deps"?   Can nobody on this list explain what it really
is or isn't good for, or when to use or not to use it?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Options for "emerge"

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

some time back it was pointed out on this list  to only use  "--changed-
use" rather than "--newuse".  So I've meanwhile removed this option (and
also a few others) from my update script which I had created early after
installing Gentoo. It now basically runs

   $ sudo emerge --ask --verbose-conflicts --changed-deps \
 --changed-use --deep --update @world

But if I understand the "emerge" manual page correctly, "--changed-deps"
causes a rebuild of a package,  if one of its  dependencies has been re-
build, even though the package does not require the newer version of the
dependency.  So does it really make sense  to have this option hardcoded
in a script?   Or does it just cause  plenty of package rebuilds without
any real effect?  Likewise, what about "--deep"?  Should I keep it?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Anyone using www-apps/jekyll?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Peter,

On Thursday, 2021-10-28 09:53:48 +0100, you wrote:

> On Wednesday, 27 October 2021 14:59:13 BST Peter Humphrey wrote:
> 
> > One possibility occurred to me: is having two ruby versions installed at
> > once the problem? I already had 3.0 installed, the current Gentoo version,
> > but jekyll needs 2.6. To test this idea, I'd have to downgrade the whole
> > system to 2.6; I don't know whether that's even feasible now.
> 
> The more I think about it, the more I suspect my path setting. In Ubuntu, 
> apparently, there's a ~/gems/bin directory, which is to go at the head of the 
> PATH, but what's the equivalent in Gentoo? I could create that directory, but 
> what should I put in it?

I faintly remember  ... long time ago,  when I had to use some Ruby gems
under both, Ubuntu and Gentoo I think I did something along the lines of

   $ gem install $pkg --user-install
   $ ln -s $(ls -drv ~/.gem/ruby/*/gems/$pkg-*/bin/$pkg | head -1) ~/bin

where the asterisks matched different Ruby and package versions, respec-
tively, and the "-rv" option for the "ls" command caused the most recent
versions to be picked by the "head" command.  And of course, my personal
"~/bin/" directory was mentioned in "PATH" early on.

Not sure though, whether or not that will help you.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] How to create a local overlay?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Tastytea,

On Sunday, 2021-09-19 16:40:18 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> 

Looks good, thank you :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] How to create a local overlay?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

recently I received an "*.ebuild" file  for a little piece of software I
need.  However, trying to find instructions in the Gentoo wiki regarding
the creation of a local overlay utilizing this ebuild file up to now on-
ly revealed confusing and/or outdated information.

Could anybody point me to some up-to-date guide explaining how to create
a local overlay  which just utilizes  this ebuild file  and the external
Git repository specified within it?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Firmware updates

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

off and on I'm receiving updates of packages  "sys-firmware/intel-micro-
code" and "sys-kernel/linux-firmware".  My kernel has

   $ grep ^CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE /usr/src/linux/.config
   CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="intel-ucode/06-5e-03 i915/skl_dmc_ver1_27.bin 
regulatory.db  regulatory.db.p7s iwlwifi-3160-17.ucode"
   CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"
   $

Is there any need  for some postprocessing  like booting  when either of
these packages is updated?   Normally my laptop  is regularly hibernated
but it is rarely booted.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Friday, 2021-08-06 08:33:33 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> ># emerge --depclean --pretend | $PAGER
> ># emerge --depclean -- ask --quiet
> 
> How about emerge -ca | tee >depclean.txt
> 
> Then if the list is short you can read it in the console and just hit y
> or n. Otherwise, hit n and read the file. It will save calculating
> dependencies twice, and we all know how slow that can be.

Nice idea, Neil.  Thanks :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Philip,

On Wednesday, 2021-08-04 07:57:06 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> Why not write the output to a file ?  -- eg
> 'emerge --ask --depclean > '.
> Then you can look at the output at leisure, even on another machine.

Depending on the  number of packages  you've installed  and depending on
the speed of your rig "emerge --depclean" may take some time, and thus I
tried to avoid  splitting it  into two calls,  one to just announce what
would be done and one to really do it.

But meanwhile I'm suspecting that any call along the lines of

   # emerge --ask ... | $PAGER

is doomed to fail  because both,  "emerge"  and the pager  are trying to
read the user's answer from the same input device (maybe "/dev/tty") and
thus both are stumbling  over the other's feet.   The only way out would
be just another option causing "emerge" to page internally.

Therefore my "edepclean" alias now calls "emerge" twice, like so:

   # emerge --depclean --pretend | $PAGER
   # emerge --depclean -- ask --quiet

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Alec, Neil,

On Tuesday, 2021-08-03 13:44:29 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote:

> On Tue, 03 Aug 2021 07:45:27 -0400, Alec Ten Harmsel wrote:
> 
> > >$ emerge --ask --depclean | less
> > > ...
> > Depending what desktop environment/terminal emulator, there are a few
> > options. You could use a terminal like gnome-terminal, konsole, etc.
> > which have scroll so you can run `emerge -ca' and scroll to view the
> > results. I run urxvt in i3 (not sure whether it scrolls or not), and I
> > always run emerge inside of a tmux and use tmux's scroll to view all
> > the output before making a decision, so you could also use tmux or
> > screen.

I also use  "urxvt"  with a scrollbar  and a buffer size  of 3000 lines.
But neither is this guaranteed to be enough, nor does it help when work-
ing directly from a console  (except perhaps when your kernel has Alan's
scrolling patch applied).

> 
> Or you could use a different pager, most does not exhibit this behaviour.
> There is probably a less setting to change this too.

Well, I tested this using "most"  from within a "urxvt" terminal, and at
least with default options  it did not work for me.   No output was dis-
played at all and even "^C" did not work.   I had to explicitly kill the
"emerge" process  from another  terminal window,  and only then received
the output from "most". :-(

I also tried good ol' "more" and "pg", but even though they both accept-
ed "^C" they somehow interfered with the question "emerge" should final-
ly be asking.  I did not yet test all these pagers directly from a cons-
ole, because I'd prefer a universal solution for this problem.  And come
to think of it, I'd prefer a solution with "more" or "pg" because where-
as "less" and "most"  each are provided  by packages  of their own,  the
former two are both provided by package  "sys-apps/util-linux"  which is
even installed on my live USB stick, if I remember correctly.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Arve,

On Monday, 2021-08-02 13:54:07 +0200, you wrote:

> ...
> Depends what you were trying to solve when piping to less.

Sorry for the confusion caused by dropping the  "--ask" option (which is
part of my "edepclean" alias).   What I'm trying to solve is reading the
output from "emerge --depclean" one screen full at a time and at the end
being asked whether or not I really want to unmerge all packages listed.
And just running

   $ emerge --ask --depclean | less

did not work when tested with a single package to be removed: the output
from "emerge" was displayed  on less than a single screen causing "less"
to just terminate  due to my setting of environment variable "LESS", but
"emerge" never issued the question whether or not to continue nor did it
accept an answer.  I had to kill it with "^C" from the shell.

I hope I could make my problem a bit clearer this time ... :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Tuesday, 2021-07-27 20:02:07 +, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> ...
>Heck, when I first ran --depclean, there
> were something like 220 packages to be removed.  It would be very easy
> to have missed openrc.  (Shameless plug) only my kernel patch which
> restores soft scroll enabled me to scroll back and see the warning.

This caused me to make a mental note to always pipe the output from com-
mand "emerge --depclean" into "less".  However, this didn't work.  There
was only a single package to be removed causing "less" to simply termin-
ate without further action, but "emerge" just stalled and never asked me
whether or not to continue.

Any thoughts about how to solve this?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Can anyone give me a hint how to get this to update?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

On Sunday, 2021-08-01 19:19:13 +0200, n952162 wrote:

> ...
> These are the packages that would be merged, in reverse order:

Just out of curiosity:  on my system  "emerge" always lists the packages
that would be merged "in order" rather than  "in reverse order".   Where
can this be configured?

   $ man emerge | grep reverse

Only finds "reverse dependencies".

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[SOLVED] Re: [gentoo-user] Is there a way to misconfigure USB ports in the kernel?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael and All,

Long time ago, on Wednesday, 2021-03-31 12:21:27 +0100, 
 wrote:

> ...
> OK, unless you made a typo and the "minutes" were meant to say seconds, this 
> is ridiculously slow.

Yes, it really were minutes.

> You could run some tests to see what is causing the delay.  The veracrypt 
> algos & cipher iterations, the fuse based ntfs-3g, or the USB stick's 
> controller.
> 
> However if, as I understand it, all other variables are the same and the only 
> change was to replace your Verbatim  64G USB 2.0 sticks with Philips 128G USB 
> 3.0 sticks, then the slow writes point to the Philips devices being the 
> culprit.

I just directly formatted one of my two Philips 128G USB 3.0 sticks with
"mkntfs"  and the write performance  without VeraCrypt  did not improve.
Further searching  the web  I found that vendors  were rarely specifying
the writing speeds of  their USB sticks at all,  and if they did,  there
was a tendency to exaggerate.  See for instance

   
https://www.lifewire.com/sandisk-extreme-pro-solid-state-flash-drive-review-4689258

Checking what SanDisk USB sticks I could easily obtain locally I finally
picked two  SanDisk Ultra 128 GB  USB 3.0 sticks,  and it turned out the
writing speed was just amazing, with and without VeraCrypt.  So basical-
ly,  USB 3.0 denotes a standard rather than a (write) speed, and it pays
to search the web for benchmark tests before buying.

Thanks for all  the help and support  the participants  on this list are
providing ... :-)

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: --depclean wants to remove openrc. Yikes!

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Alan,

On Monday, 2021-07-26 19:01:21 +, you wrote:

> ...
> The warning was not very explicit.  An explicit warning would have said
> "--depclean is capable of removing critical system packages".  As it
> happened I didn't ignore the warning.  But some people might.
> 
> You seem to see nothing wrong with an OS being one keypress away from
> destroying itself.  I do.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you not  only got this warning for
"openrc" but also for "nano".  I remember that after my first Gentoo in-
stall ever,  I explicitly emerged  the packages  "vim"  (as an emergency
fallback) and  -- more importantly --  "XEmacs" which were thus added to
"@world".   I then ran my very first  "emerge --ask --depclean"  and got
that warning about "nano".  I do not remember the exact wording,  but --
honestly -- I was startled.  Not very explicit?   When "emerge" is tell-
ing me that removing "nano" might result in my system becoming unusable?
Or something to that effect?   Being a Gentoo novice then, I immediately
replied "n", researched the webs, and then with a bit more knowledge and
conscience I rerun "emerge --ask --depclean" and bravely typed "y".

You were startled, too,  when reading that warning,  so where exactly is
the problem?   Had I wanted a third editor  I'd have stuffed "nano" into
"@world", but I didn't.  Since you want "openrc", you should.

And yes,  some people tend to ignore warnings.   In particular, if there
are just too many of them.   I remember when back in the old days plenty
of sources suggested to put  "alias rm='rm -i'"  into one's profile.   I
always objected to this,  because you'd get so used to typing "y" to the
plethora of questions  that you'd have  an excellent chance  to miss the
one file which would have been worth retaining.

So the most important rule  when working  with computers  still is "Read
carefully, think carefully, then type carefully".  More warnings, bigger
fonts or red colour simply don't cut it.  Or are you skimming your "gcc"
compilation logs  after doing your weekly Gentoo upgrade for every warn-
ing in order  to then check  the source code  to see whether  or not you
should do anything about it?  I don't.

My two cents ...

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] cryptsetup close and device in use when it is not

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Ramon, Dale,

On Tuesday, 2021-07-06 20:40:32 +0200, Ramon Fischer wrote:

> This is just a guess. Maybe you have two devices with the same UUID?
> 
> If so, you can change it with:
> 
> $ cryptsetup --uuid="" luksUUID "/dev/sdx1"

Good idea.   But to find out  whether or not this is the cause of Dale's
problems I would suggest to first run "cryptsetup"  without the "--uuid"
option (in order to get  the UUID listed)  and to then compare this with
the output from "ls /dev/disk/by-uuid".

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] system.map file in /boot. How to manage?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Neil,

On Thursday, 2021-07-01 15:28:51 +0100, you wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Jul 2021 13:16:29 +0200, Dr Rainer Woitok wrote:
> 
> > Same here.   And whenever  I configure  a new kernel  my kernel managing
> > script makes sure both,  the kernel I'm currenty running on  and the one
> > just configured are in "@world".  That way "emerge --depclean" will nev-
> > er remove a kernel package.
> 
> You can also do that with sets. Add this to sets.conf
> 
> [kernels]
> class = portage.sets.dbapi.OwnerSet
> world-candidate = False
> files = /usr/src
> 
> add emerge -n @kernels once. Then depclean will never touch a kernel
> source package.

Nice trick, thank you :-).   This would slightly simplify my kernel man-
aging script.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] system.map file in /boot. How to manage?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Dale,

On Thursday, 2021-07-01 01:59:57 -0500, you wrote:

> ...
> 
> The subject line pretty much describes this.  How does one manage the
> system.map file in /boot?  Is it needed?  Should it be updated with each
> kernel?  I tend to keep 2 to 3 kernels installed.

Same here.   And whenever  I configure  a new kernel  my kernel managing
script makes sure both,  the kernel I'm currenty running on  and the one
just configured are in "@world".  That way "emerge --depclean" will nev-
er remove a kernel package.

When I finally decide  to explicitly remove a kernel  my kernel managing
script will basically execute this before calling "grub-mkconfig":

   # Argument 1 must contain slot number of kernel to be removed.

   emerge --deselect --quiet sys-kernel/gentoo-sources:$1
   rm -fr /lib/modules/$1-gentoo /boot/*-$1-gentoo{,.old} \
  /usr/src/linux-$1-gentoo

This is stuff I somewhere picked up  from the Gentoo Handbook when I did
my first Gentoo install.

> ...
>  Should I version the
> system.map file the same as kernels?

Not sure about that.   Mine ARE versioned.   That's probably what "grub-
mkconfig" is doing by default.

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Peter,

On Tuesday, 2021-06-15 08:41:40 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> ># eselect locale set 4
> ># env-update
> > 
> >>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
> 
> After that you need to source /etc/profile, no?

Yes,  if you want to continue working in this shell.   But if I start my
Gentoo update script from my unprivileged userid,  it only depends on my
own environment and on what "/etc/sudoers" allows through.

But your remark  made me curious  about what  was really changed  in the
environment.   So I started a privileged shell  using my own environment
and then executed

   # env | sort > /tmp/env1
   # . /etc/profile
   # env | sort > /tmp/env2
   # diff -du /tmp/env*

The trivial  environment variable changes  were for "LESS",  "LS_COLORS"
(which was added), "MANPATH", "PATH", and "PS1".  However, the non-triv-
ial environment variable change was:

   -LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   +LANG=en_GB.utf8

which sort of shocked me,  because that effectively again unset the only
variable setting that allowed building of package "/texlive-basic-2021":

> ...
> > So "en_GB.utf8" in "02locale"  but "export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8" in my Shell
> > script doing the Gentoo updates is the only working combination I've yet
> > found.

May this be some sort of bug in "glibc"?

Utterly puzzled ...
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Sunday, 2021-06-13 18:23:54 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> Yes, this looks odd, but I have not worked out how locale is sourced in 
> detail.  Have you added:
> 
>  LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
> 
> in your /etc/env.d/02locale for a system wide setting?

No, this file still contains

   LANG="en_GB.utf8"

However, if I change that line to

   LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"

then I do get a new locale when running

   # env-update
   >>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
   # eselect locale list
   Available targets for the LANG variable:
 [1]   C
 [2]   C.utf8
 [3]   POSIX
 [4]   en_GB.utf8
 [5]   en_GB.UTF-8 *
 [ ]   (free form)
   #

but afterwards  re-building package "texlive-basic" again fails  until I
undo this change by executing

   # eselect locale set 4
   # env-update
   >>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
   # eselect locale list
   Available targets for the LANG variable:
 [1]   C
 [2]   C.utf8
 [3]   POSIX
 [4]   en_GB.utf8 *
 [ ]   (free form)
   # grep -v '^#' /etc/env.d/02locale
   LANG="en_GB.utf8"
   #

So "en_GB.utf8" in "02locale"  but "export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8" in my Shell
script doing the Gentoo updates is the only working combination I've yet
found.  Explanations heartily welcome :-/

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Sunday, 2021-06-13 16:16:37 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> $ grep -i en_gb /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED
> en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
> en_GB ISO-8859-1

Same here.

> ...
> $ eselect locale list
> Available targets for the LANG variable:
>   [1]   C
>   [2]   C.utf8
>   [3]   POSIX
> [snip ... ]
>   [7]   en_GB
>   [8]   en_GB.iso88591
>   [9]   en_GB.utf8
>   [10]  en_US
>   [11]  en_US.iso88591
>   [12]  en_US.utf8
>   [13]  en_GB.UTF-8 *
>   [ ]   (free form)

Now it's becoming really mysterious, right from the local horse's mouth:

   $ eselect locale list
   Available targets for the LANG variable:
 [1]   C
 [2]   C.utf8
 [3]   POSIX
 [4]   en_GB.utf8 *
 [ ]   (free form)

So allegedly my only  "available target"  for English  is the not (or no
longer) working "en_GB.utf8".   Being slightly flabbergasted  would be a
huge understatement ... :-/

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

All,

On Sunday, 2021-06-13 15:39:46 +0200, I myself wrote:

> ...
> > > $ sudo locale
> > > LANG=en_GB.utf8
> > > ...
> Erm,  is there a difference between  "*.utf8" and "*.UTF-8"?   Does case
> matter?

Apparently yes.   At least  for Perl  or anything else  used by Portage.
Running my package upgrade script again after setting

   $ export LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

just succeeded.  "As soon as you're doing it right,  it just works". :-)
But what exactly is the difference?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Michael,

On Saturday, 2021-06-12 16:29:12 +0100, you wrote:

> ...
> > $ sudo locale
> > LANG=en_GB.utf8
> > ...
> I can't speak for your lua* packages, but as long as you have defined your 
> locale correctly in /etc/locale.gen your system should source what it needs 
> from there.

Erm,  is there a difference between  "*.utf8" and "*.UTF-8"?   Does case
matter?  The web page

   https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/UTF-8

provides a mix of both notations, but I get

   $ grep -v '^#' /etc/locale.gen

   en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
   $

So do I have to adapt my definition of "LANG"?

> Regarding perl complaining, there was a perl update recently (stable) so 
> running perl-cleaner is recommended and may fix at least your texlive-basic 
> issue.

I installed Perl version 5.32.1 two weeks ago during my last routine up-
grade,  so this might be  a reason as well.   And running "perl-cleaner"
returned this:

   $ perl-cleaner --all --pretend
* Would try to remove the following perl-core packages from world file
*emerge --deselect  perl-core/File-Temp 
* Would try to update installed Perl virtuals
*emerge -u1  virtual/perl-Carp virtual/perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib 
virtual/perl-CPAN-Meta virtual/perl-CPAN-Meta-YAML virtual/perl-Data-Dumper 
virtual/perl-Digest virtual/perl-Digest-MD5 virtual/perl-Digest-SHA 
virtual/perl-Encode virtual/perl-Exporter virtual/perl-ExtUtils-CBuilder 
virtual/perl-ExtUtils-Install virtual/perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker 
virtual/perl-ExtUtils-Manifest virtual/perl-ExtUtils-ParseXS 
virtual/perl-File-Path virtual/perl-File-Spec virtual/perl-File-Temp 
virtual/perl-Getopt-Long virtual/perl-IO virtual/perl-JSON-PP 
virtual/perl-libnet virtual/perl-MIME-Base64 virtual/perl-Module-Metadata 
virtual/perl-parent virtual/perl-Parse-CPAN-Meta virtual/perl-Perl-OSType 
virtual/perl-Pod-Parser virtual/perl-podlators virtual/perl-Scalar-List-Utils 
virtual/perl-Storable virtual/perl-Sys-Syslog virtual/perl-Test-Harness 
virtual/perl-Test-Simple virtual/perl-Text-ParseWords virtual/perl-Time-Local 
virtual/perl-version virtual/perl-XSLoader 

* Locating packages for an update
* Locating ebuilds linked against libperl
 * No package needs to be reinstalled.
   $

As far as I can see all these virtual packages are installed and updated
to the most recent  stable version.   But nevertheless  I will try that,
too.

By the way, "man perl-cleaner" starts with

   DESCRIPTION
  perl-cleaner -- Find & rebuild packages and Perl header files broken
  due to a perl upgrade

Is this what they call "inspiring confidence"? :-)

Is there a reason why "perl-cleaner"  should be run manually rather than
automatically after emerging  any Perl component?   Should I put it into
my "edepclean" script which I normally run after a successful upgrade?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] Building package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" failed

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

it's been quite a while that I had problems  doing my routine Gentoo up-
grade.   This time package  "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021" balked, and
in the build log I found this:

 * Package:dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021
 * Repository: gentoo
 * Maintainer: aball...@gentoo.org t...@gentoo.org
 * USE:abi_x86_64 amd64 elibc_glibc kernel_linux luajittex userland_GNU
 * FEATURES:   network-sandbox preserve-libs sandbox userpriv usersandbox
 ---8><---
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = "en_GB:en",
LC_ALL = (unset),
LC_MESSAGES = "C",
LC_CTYPE = "C.UTF-8",
LC_COLLATE = "C",
LANG = "en_GB"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

While the value of environment variable "LANGUAGE"  is clearly mine, the
other values except  "LC_COLLATE" and "LC_ALL"  are obviously _not mine_
(in particular "LANG" is missing the ".utf8" part):

$ sudo env | grep LANGU
Password:
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
$ sudo locale
LANG=en_GB.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.utf8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.utf8"
LC_ALL=
$

Using "grep"  to sift through  my build logs  the first occurance of the
line "perl: warning: Setting locale failed." occured a year ago at 2020-
05-18 while upgrading package "media-libs/exiftool-11.93" and since then
it is present  in quite a few  build logs  without apparently  doing any
harm.  However, now making "luatex", "luahbtex", and "dviluatex" as part
of package "dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021"  all failed with "Unable  to
read environment locale: exit now." and finally caused the build to die:

 ---8><---
fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf files (in precedence order):
fmtutil:   texmf-dist/fmtutil/format.texlive-basic.cnf
fmtutil: fmtutil is using the following fmtutil.cnf file for writing changes:
fmtutil:   texmf-dist/fmtutil/format.texlive-basic.cnf
fmtutil [INFO]: writing formats under 
/var/tmp/portage/dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021/work/texmf-var/web2c
fmtutil [INFO]: --- remaking luatex with luatex
fmtutil: running `luatex -ini   -jobname=luatex -progname=luatex luatex.ini' ...
Unable to read environment locale: exit now.
 ---8><---
fmtutil [INFO]: --- remaking luahbtex with luahbtex
fmtutil: running `luahbtex -ini   -jobname=luahbtex -progname=luahbtex 
luatex.ini' ...
Unable to read environment locale: exit now.
 ---8><---
fmtutil [INFO]: --- remaking dviluatex with luatex
fmtutil: running `luatex -ini   -jobname=dviluatex -progname=dviluatex 
dviluatex.ini' ...
Unable to read environment locale: exit now.
 ---8><---
fmtutil [INFO]: failed to build: 3 (luatex/luatex luahbtex/luahbtex 
luatex/dviluatex)
fmtutil [INFO]: total formats: 8
fmtutil [INFO]: exiting with status 3
 * ERROR: dev-texlive/texlive-basic-2021::gentoo failed (compile phase):
 *   failed to build format texmf-dist/fmtutil/format.texlive-basic.cnf
 * 
 * Call stack:
 * ebuild.sh, line 125:  Called src_compile
 *   environment, line 510:  Called texlive-module_src_compile
 *   environment, line 721:  Called die
 * The specific snippet of code:
 *   VARTEXFONTS="${T}/fonts" 
TEXMFHOME="${S}/texmf:${S}/texmf-dist:${S}/texmf-var" env -u TEXINPUTS 
$fmt_call --cnffile "${i}" --fmtdir "${S}/texmf-var/web2c" --all || die "failed 
to build format ${i}";

Is the failure to make "luatex", "luahbtex",  and "dviluatex" due to not
being able to "read environment locale" a consequence of "perl" claiming
to have problems with _my_ locale?  If not, what else is going on here?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] lightdm - can not login

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thelma,

On Thursday, 2021-06-10 18:24:34 -0600, you wrote:

> ...
> It seems to me lightdm defaults to "twm" which file controls it? 
> I want to change it to xfce4

Not quite.   Either in  configuration file  "/etc/conf.d/xdm"  (when you
have package "x11-apps/xdm" installed)  or "/etc/conf.d/display-manager"
(when you have  the more  up-to-date package  "gui-libs/display-manager-
init" installed) you want to set

   DISPLAYMANAGER="lightdm"

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] lightdm - can not login

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Thelma,

On Thursday, 2021-06-10 15:42:10 -0600, you wrote:

> ...
> In:   /usr/share/sddm/sddm.conf.d/00default.conf
> I change to 
> Numlock=on

No!  Directory "/usr/share/sddm/" contains the default configuration for
"sddm" for reference only.   You should undo  this change.   As Dale has
already mentioned, the real configuration file is "/etc/sddm.conf".

Sincerely,
  Rainer

Re: [gentoo-user] What groups should user "root" be in?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Aisha,

On Wednesday, 2021-05-19 19:14:27 -0400, you wrote:

> ...
> Are you running your machine day-to-day as root?
> That sounds like a recipe for disaster...

Of course not.   But if that quote [1] had any substance in it, it COULD
happen that some deamon running as user "root" failed  because of "root"
not being in the correct groups.

> That preaching aside, I do have audio working as a normal user and my groups 
> are -
> 
> $ groups aisha
> wheel video portage lxc lxd aisha
> $ groups root
> root bin daemon sys adm disk wheel floppy tape video lxc lxd

So neither your own id nor "root" is a member of group "audio" and audio
is working nevertheless.   Hum, that just triggers  the next question to
all Gentooers: What the heck is group "audio" good for?

> ...
> > [1] 
> > https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[gentoo-user] What groups should user "root" be in?

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Greetings,

still hunting down the reasons for my  laptop not producing any sound, I
have meanwhile found reports on the web "no sound even though root is in
group audio" or "Dbus doesn't "care" who root is -- it checks the ident-
ity of the account  that requested an action,  and if that account isn't
allowed to perform that action, the request is denied" [1].

I can't remember  ever having manually added user  "root"  to any groups
since I installed Gentoo on my laptop (as opposed to adding my own user-
id to quite some groups)m and these are the few groups "root" is into:

   $ id root
   uid=0(root) gid=0(root) 
groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel),11(floppy),26(tape),27(video)
   $

Should there be more?  In particular, should "root" be in group "audio"?

Sincerely,
  Rainer

[1] 
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=3640443#post3640443