[gentoo-amd64] CD drive opening on boot!!

[gentoo-amd64] CD drive opening on boot!!

[Paul Stear]

Hi all,
I have a strange problem that started happening a few days ago.  When I boot 
the machine, the CD/DVD tray partially opens about an inch and stays open until 
manually closed.
I have just noticed that it opens again on shutdown.

This could be related:
On boot the machine stops for a long time with Uniform CD-ROM driver revision: 
3.20 and stops again for a period of time at: INIT: Entering runlevel 3.

In the message log I find an entry:-
Uniform CD-ROM driver revision: 3.20
Driver 'sd' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
Driver 'sr' needs updating - please use bus_type methods

I have a dvd drive and a dvd writer at hds & hdb

Emerge --info:-
Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/amd64/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.4, 
glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.30-gentoo-r5 x86_64)
=================================================================                                              
System uname: Linux-2.6.30-gentoo-r5-x86_64-AMD_Athlon-tm-
_64_X2_Dual_Core_Processor_4600+-with-gentoo-1.12.13 
Timestamp of tree: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:01 +0000                                                             
ccache version 2.4 [enabled]                                                                                   
app-shells/bash:     4.0_p35                                                                                   
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.9-r1                                                                                 
dev-lang/python:     2.6.4                                                                                     
dev-util/ccache:     2.4-r7                                                                                    
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4-r3                                                                                  
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13                                                                                   
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6-r2                                                                                    
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63-r1                                                                             
sys-devel/automake:  1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2                                                      
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3                                                                                   
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1                                                                                    
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b                                                                                    
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.27-r2                                                                                 
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"                                                                                        
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"                                                                                   
CFLAGS="-Os -march=k8 -mno-tls-direct-seg-refs -mmmx -msse3 -pipe -fomit-frame-
pointer"                        
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" 


Thanks for any help
Paul
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] CD drive opening on boot!!

[Paul Hartman]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Paul Stear <gentoo@appjaws.plus.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I have a strange problem that started happening a few days ago.  When I boot
> the machine, the CD/DVD tray partially opens about an inch and stays open until
> manually closed.
> I have just noticed that it opens again on shutdown.

May be a stupid suggestion, but check that the cable is attached
securely at both ends, and maybe try replacing it. I had very similar
weirdness on a CD-ROM drive in the past because of a faulty IDE cable.

The "please use bus_type methods" messages can be ignored. I think
everyone gets those.

[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

Paul Hartman posted on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:06:23 -0600 as excerpted:

> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Paul Stear <gentoo@appjaws.plus.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> I have a strange problem that started happening a few days ago.  When I
>> boot the machine, the CD/DVD tray partially opens about an inch and
>> stays open until manually closed.
>> I have just noticed that it opens again on shutdown.
> 
> May be a stupid suggestion, but check that the cable is attached
> securely at both ends, and maybe try replacing it. I had very similar
> weirdness on a CD-ROM drive in the past because of a faulty IDE cable.
> 
> The "please use bus_type methods" messages can be ignored. I think
> everyone gets those.

I don't get that message, AFAIK.  It sounds to me like your udev and 
kernel version may be getting a bit out of sync.  I'm on ~amd64 (and 
working on ~x86 for my AA1 netbook I'm finally doing the Gentoo install 
on...), and always run at least the latest release kernel, 2.6.32 ATM, if 
I'm not testing live git kernels.  As such I'm running udev-149 presently.

The emerge --info gave the OP's kernel as 2.6.30 (which is long ago 
history for me), and udev-146-r1 is the latest amd64 stable but there are 
older ones in the tree and it might not be updated to the latest.  I'd 
suggest updating to at least that if you haven't already, and perhaps 
considering ~arch, and see if that gets rid of the messages.

It could also be hdparm or the like, if you have it set to run as a 
system service.  epkginfo says hdparm-9.20 is latest stable.  Running 
~amd64, I'm running hdparm-9.27.

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Paul Stear]

Thanks for the replies, I have updated the kernel, udev and hal and the cd 
stays closed on boot.  Thanks for the info.  However I now have another 
problem:
When I insert a usb drive or put a cd into the cd drive I am not getting any 
notification that they have been detected.  I have now realised that this 
hasn't been working for sometime.
Any thoughts on how to resolve this?
Thanks for your time
Paul

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

Paul Stear posted on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:27:49 +0000 as excerpted:

> Thanks for the replies, I have updated the kernel, udev and hal and the
> cd stays closed on boot.  Thanks for the info.  However I now have
> another problem:
> When I insert a usb drive or put a cd into the cd drive I am not getting
> any notification that they have been detected.  I have now realised that
> this hasn't been working for sometime. Any thoughts on how to resolve
> this?

No notice... on what level?  At the desktop?  What desktop environment do 
you use?  No notification in the system log?  For the USB drive, does the 
device show up as a new /dev/sdX when you plug it in?  Does lsusb see it?

IOW, you didn't include enough information to know where to start on that 
problem, or even at what level the problem is appearing, system/kernel/
udev level, desktop environment level, or somewhere on the stack (dbus, 
hal, perhaps fstab) between the two.

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Paul Stear]

On Saturday 19 Dec 2009 20:59:52 Duncan wrote:
> Paul Stear posted on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:27:49 +0000 as excerpted:
> > Thanks for the replies, I have updated the kernel, udev and hal and the
> > cd stays closed on boot.  Thanks for the info.  However I now have
> > another problem:
> > When I insert a usb drive or put a cd into the cd drive I am not getting
> > any notification that they have been detected.  I have now realised that
> > this hasn't been working for sometime. Any thoughts on how to resolve
> > this?
> 
> No notice... on what level?  At the desktop?  What desktop environment do
> you use?  No notification in the system log?  For the USB drive, does the
> device show up as a new /dev/sdX when you plug it in?  Does lsusb see it?
> 
> IOW, you didn't include enough information to know where to start on that
> problem, or even at what level the problem is appearing, system/kernel/
> udev level, desktop environment level, or somewhere on the stack (dbus,
> hal, perhaps fstab) between the two.
> 
Hello Duncan,
You are right I didn't give enough information.
I am running kde 4.3.4.
dmesg reports the flash disc as sde The entry sde1 in directory media is blank. 
There is no entry for sde  also the kde desktop did not report the device, in 
fact no pop up at all.
Looking at /dev/disk/by-id:
ata-DVD-ROM_BVD316E link tp /hdb
ata-PHILIPS_DVDR16LS_DCV0516041208 linked to /hda

The In /DEV cdrom2 cdrom3 cdrw3 dvd2 dvd3 dvdrw3 are all linked to /hdb
but I have no entry for /hdb in /media
So again if I insert a music cd in any of the drives, nothing happens.  I used 
to get a pop up on the kde desktop asking what I wanted to do and displaying 
various options, e.g. play, copy, rip etc.

This seems to be a bit of a mess and help will be greatly appreciated.
Paul
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

Paul Stear posted on Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:26:43 +0000 as excerpted:

> On Saturday 19 Dec 2009 20:59:52 Duncan wrote:
>> Paul Stear posted on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:27:49 +0000 as excerpted:
>> > Thanks for the replies, I have updated the kernel, udev and hal and
>> > the cd stays closed on boot.  Thanks for the info.  However I now
>> > have another problem:
>> > When I insert a usb drive or put a cd into the cd drive I am not
>> > getting any notification that they have been detected.  I have now
>> > realised that this hasn't been working for sometime. Any thoughts on
>> > how to resolve this?
>> 
>> No notice... on what level?  At the desktop?  What desktop environment
>> do you use?  No notification in the system log?  For the USB drive,
>> does the device show up as a new /dev/sdX when you plug it in?  Does
>> lsusb see it?
>> 
>> IOW, you didn't include enough information to know where to start on
>> that problem, or even at what level the problem is appearing,
>> system/kernel/ udev level, desktop environment level, or somewhere on
>> the stack (dbus, hal, perhaps fstab) between the two.

> You are right I didn't give enough information. I am running kde 4.3.4.
> dmesg reports the flash disc as sde The entry sde1 in directory media is
> blank. There is no entry for sde  also the kde desktop did not report
> the device, in fact no pop up at all.
> Looking at /dev/disk/by-id:
> ata-DVD-ROM_BVD316E link tp /hdb
> ata-PHILIPS_DVDR16LS_DCV0516041208 linked to /hda
> 
> The In /DEV cdrom2 cdrom3 cdrw3 dvd2 dvd3 dvdrw3 are all linked to /hdb
> but I have no entry for /hdb in /media So again if I insert a music cd
> in any of the drives, nothing happens.  I used to get a pop up on the
> kde desktop asking what I wanted to do and displaying various options,
> e.g. play, copy, rip etc.
> 
> This seems to be a bit of a mess and help will be greatly appreciated.

OK, that's a bit better.  We know the kernel and udev seem to be doing 
their thing correctly, if the devices are showing up in /dev.

But we don't know whether it's hal or kde, now, or possibly dbus (oh, and 
do you have policykit installed and the USE flag enabled, that's another 
possibility...).  hal config issues can be seriously un-fun to try to 
debug and fix, even for people who prefer the command line for most stuff.

It /may/ be worth simply doing your mounts from the commandline, and 
similarly, starting your cdplayer app manually instead of letting the 
popup handle it, rather than trying to figure out hal.

I do know that if there's an entry in fstab for it, hal /used/ to ignore 
the fstab entry and mount it in /media on its own anyway, but now defers 
to the fstab entry and ignores the event.  I thought that might be the 
issue, but while you didn't mention fstab, since I asked you about it, 
I'm assuming there's no entry corresponding to either of the device 
entries there.

Something else you might consider, tho it's not urgent and AFAIK is 
unrelated to this, but who knows?  /dev/hd? indicates that you're still 
using the old kernel ide drivers.  Those are now officially deprecated, 
with the newer libata SATA/PATA drivers the encouraged replacement (yes, 
even tho the config still says pata's experimental).  They'll use sd? 
notation instead of the older hd? notation, so then you'll not have any 
hd? devices at all.  Unless you /know/ that you don't have libata support 
for your old ide/pata chipset, I'd strongly encourage you to consider 
switching... at your leisure, tho.

And I'd suggest you run kernel 2.6.27 or newer (/I'd/ suggest 2.6.30 or 
newer, probably 2.6.31 as 2.6.32 won't be keyworded stable yet, but...) 
as the newer udevs work best with it, even if they only require 2.6.25.

It's /possible/ that the problem will more or less "magically" disappear, 
if you switch to the SATA/PATA drivers, with a reasonably new kernel and 
udev, and dbus and hal, while you are at it.  I'd at least ensure I was 
running the latest stable of each.  Then do a revdep-rebuild, and at 
least rebuild kdelibs if anything changed.  If we're lucky, it's just 
something getting out of sync, not any real bug or config issue, and 
updating to the latest stable (or latest ~arch if that's what you 
normally run) on all of it, plus rebuilding kdelibs and doing a revdep-
rebuild, will get you running without even touching the headache that hal 
and policykit could well be if it's necessary to debug their config.

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[gentoo]

Thanks for your reply Duncan,
<snip>

After re-emerging hal udev dbus pmount I still had no notification pop-up.  
Looking harder at this problem, I have identified 2 issues and rectified them. 
1. The dvd drives were not acpi compatible, so I have changed them and now the 
tray stays closed.
2. I have deleted .kde4 and reloaded kde, When I originally installed kde4 I 
copied the original .kde3 directory and renamed it .kde4  I now have kde 
running properly and if I insert a usb disc or insert a cd I now get the 
notification pop-up with the options.  So far so good.  However, alsaplayer and 
kscd are still not working.  I also have problems playing dvds in kmplayer or 
xine, the picture keeps breaking up.
> 
> But we don't know whether it's hal or kde, now, or possibly dbus (oh, and
> do you have policykit installed and the USE flag enabled, that's another
> possibility...). 
<snip> I do not have policy kit installed
I do not have fstab entries for the dvd devices.
 
> Something else you might consider, tho it's not urgent and AFAIK is
> unrelated to this, but who knows?  /dev/hd? indicates that you're still
> using the old kernel ide drivers.  Those are now officially deprecated,
> with the newer libata SATA/PATA drivers the encouraged replacement (yes,
> even tho the config still says pata's experimental).  They'll use sd?
> notation instead of the older hd? notation, so then you'll not have any
> hd? devices at all.  Unless you /know/ that you don't have libata support
> for your old ide/pata chipset, I'd strongly encourage you to consider
> switching... at your leisure, tho.
I have now switch off the old pata drivers and have noticed that my hard disks 
are now sga sgb etc. I now use kernel 2.6.31
<snip>
I have been running a amd64 system with a lot of packages that are marked 
~amd64.
So I have decided to go to a full blow ~amd64 system in the hope that my 
remaining problems will be resolved. 

Thanks for your time, I'll let you know how things go after the 400 packages to 
be built.
Paul

[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

gentoo posted on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:46:35 +0000 as excerpted:

> Thanks for your reply Duncan,
> <snip>
> 
> After re-emerging hal udev dbus pmount I still had no notification
> pop-up. Looking harder at this problem, I have identified 2 issues and
> rectified them. 1. The dvd drives were not acpi compatible, so I have
> changed them and now the tray stays closed.
> 2. I have deleted .kde4 and reloaded kde, When I originally installed
> kde4 I copied the original .kde3 directory and renamed it .kde4  I now
> have kde running properly and if I insert a usb disc or insert a cd I
> now get the notification pop-up with the options.  So far so good.

=:^)

> However, alsaplayer and kscd are still not working.  I also have
> problems playing dvds in kmplayer or xine, the picture keeps breaking
> up.

I don't know about alsaplayer, but at least here, kscd seems only able to 
cope with one CD/DVD drive.  If you have more than one, the other one is 
ignored, tho there's an option somewhere (unfortunately IDR where ATM, 
but look in "the application formerly known as kcontrol", now 
unfortunately inaccurately and /waaayyy/ too generically called 
systemsettings, even tho it controls kde, NOT the system as a whole) to 
change which one it points to, if desired.

The breaking-up picture is probably because you have too much eye candy 
running for your resolution and graphics card.  Try disabling compositing 
temporarily when you're playing video.  There's a keyboard shortcut for 
it, or it's in desktop effects in "the application formerly known as 
kcontrol".

Also... back in kde3, the powerful media player was kaffeine.  There's a 
live version or pre-release or some such available for kde4, but it's an 
emasculated wimp compared to its former kde3 self.

Fortunately, there's an already quite mature qt4 based media player, 
smplayer, that's if anything even more powerful than kde3's kaffeine was. 
=:^)  The biggest difference is that while kaffeine is based on xine, 
smplayer is mplayer based.  But most folks interested in media on kde4 
will have both installed anyway, xine for the audio backend, and mplayer 
as a dependency of mplayerthumbs, used to generate video thumbnails, and 
they both play more or less the same formats, so there's not /that/ much 
difference.

But certainly checkout smplayer, if you'd like the ability to single-
frame-step thru your videos, do variable speed playback, etc.  It's 
definitely more powerful than the kde4 default dragonplayer, etc, in that 
regard.  I've been /very/ happy with it! =:^)

>> Something else you might consider, tho it's not urgent and AFAIK is
>> unrelated to this, but who knows?  /dev/hd? indicates that you're still
>> using the old kernel ide drivers.  Those are now officially deprecated,
>> with the newer libata SATA/PATA drivers the encouraged replacement
>> (yes, even tho the config still says pata's experimental).  They'll use
>> sd? notation instead of the older hd? notation, so then you'll not have
>> any hd? devices at all.  Unless you /know/ that you don't have libata
>> support for your old ide/pata chipset, I'd strongly encourage you to
>> consider switching... at your leisure, tho.

> I have now switch off the old pata drivers and have noticed that my hard
> disks are now sga sgb etc. I now use kernel 2.6.31 <snip>
> I have been running a amd64 system with a lot of packages that are
> marked ~amd64.
> So I have decided to go to a full blow ~amd64 system in the hope that my
> remaining problems will be resolved.

~arch does mean more and faster updates and that you should be prepared 
to resort to an alternate boot image, live/rescuecd or the like, in 
ordered to fix things if necessary, but that's a good idea in any case.  
And at least a package is normally tested to work on the developer's 
~arch system before it's keyworded ~arch, even if it's not tested to the 
degree that stable is.  But a half-stable half-~arch system is a no-man's-
land, really not tested, nor practically testable since there's so many 
possible variants, at all.  So if you're running more than a very limited 
set of ~arch packages (with few dependencies), I'd definitely recommend 
~arch over stable with many ~arch packages.  At least that's known to 
work on the dev's full ~arch system, something that cannot be said of a 
half-way ~arch installation.

> Thanks for your time, I'll let you know how things go after the 400
> packages to be built.
> Paul

=:^)

FWIW and as I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I'm in the process of 
building a new ~x86 system image for my netbook.  I had a stickler of a 
problem with X, due to copying one too many config files from my amd64 
machine without editing, so mesa and xorg-server wouldn't build because 
they were looking in a non-existent (in the 32-bit chroot) lib64, instead 
of in lib, that took a few days to trace and resolve, but now I'm in the 
"install hundreds of packages" phase myself, so I know what you're 
feeling!

Let's see... the last stall trying to merge kde4 was ffmpeg.  It failed, 
with 180 packages dependent on it to go.  I got that running (use=pic 
works better on amd64 where it's used for libs anyway, than on x86, so 
I'm now running use=-pic on the 32-bit chroot image)...  It finished 112 
out of 180 before the next failure, but I run with --keep-going, so 
portage is, after dropping kmail and kaddressbook due to the libkleo 
failure...  It has now completed 10 of 56 of the remainder.  Assuming no 
further issues with the remaining 46, when they finish I'll have to look 
at libkleo and figure out what went wrong with it before trying kmail and 
kaddressbook again...  

If I'm lucky, the libkleo failure was a one-off (missing dep or 
something), and it'll "just work" when I try it again.  If not, hopefully 
it'll be at least as easy to fix as the ffmpeg one was... check bugzilla 
and it's already reported, with a workaround (use=-pic in that case) 
available. =:^)  If I'm unlucky, it'll be like the mesa and xorg 
failures, and take me a couple days of hacking to trace and figure out... 
only to find it was my own config error.  If I'm /really/ unlucky, it'll 
be a real bug that nobody has a fix/workaround for, yet.  But those 
aren't very common, fortunately, and when they are, when it's something 
as commonly used as a kmail dependency, usually other people start 
hitting it pretty quickly and /someone/ finds a workaround/fix.

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Lie Ryan]

On 12/23/2009 11:36 PM, Duncan wrote:
> ~arch does mean more and faster updates and that you should be prepared
> to resort to an alternate boot image, live/rescuecd or the like, in
> ordered to fix things if necessary, but that's a good idea in any case.
> And at least a package is normally tested to work on the developer's
> ~arch system before it's keyworded ~arch, even if it's not tested to the
> degree that stable is.  But a half-stable half-~arch system is a no-man's-
> land, really not tested, nor practically testable since there's so many
> possible variants, at all.  So if you're running more than a very limited
> set of ~arch packages (with few dependencies), I'd definitely recommend
> ~arch over stable with many ~arch packages.  At least that's known to
> work on the dev's full ~arch system, something that cannot be said of a
> half-way ~arch installation.

But the only way to be sure that an ~arch plays nicely with the 
currently stable packages is to *not* go full ~arch. With full ~arch, 
you only knows that the package plays well with the latest version of 
all packages; but you don't know how it performs with the stable tree.

[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

Lie Ryan posted on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:45:23 +1100 as excerpted:

> But the only way to be sure that an ~arch plays nicely with the
> currently stable packages is to *not* go full ~arch. With full ~arch,
> you only knows that the package plays well with the latest version of
> all packages; but you don't know how it performs with the stable tree.

True.  When it comes time to stable a package, the devs test the package 
(or set of packages for something like xorg/gnome/kde) on an otherwise 
stable system.  If it works, they can stable it.

But the point is, there's no way to test a half-stable system.  Before 
they stable, they test the new packages (only) on an otherwise stable 
system, and before they ~arch, they test on at least the developer's 
machine that it works, but there's no real testing, and indeed, no 
practical way /to/ test because of the number of possibilities involved, 
on a system that's partly stable and partly unstable.  With Gentoo, it's 
still an option the user has, but as they say, if it breaks, you get to 
keep the pieces, it's definitely a "beware, here be dragons!" option.

Of course, personally, I'm a dyed in the wool and unapologetic ~arch 
user, plus often various development overlays, unmasking various still 
hard-masked packages, etc.  To me, stable is months to sometimes years 
out of date and stale.  But I (sort of) understand folks who want stable, 
tho I honestly don't /quite/ comprehend why they're on Gentoo in that 
case, as it honestly seems to me a much slower cycling distribution like 
Debian stable or the various long term support enterprise distributions 
(Red Hat/CentOS, Novell, UbuntuLTS...) would be more appropriate if long-
term stability is what they're after.

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Lie Ryan]

On 12/24/2009 3:01 AM, Duncan wrote:
> But the point is, there's no way to test a half-stable system.  Before
> they stable, they test the new packages (only) on an otherwise stable
> system, and before they ~arch, they test on at least the developer's
> machine that it works, but there's no real testing, and indeed, no
> practical way /to/ test because of the number of possibilities involved,
> on a system that's partly stable and partly unstable.  With Gentoo, it's
> still an option the user has, but as they say, if it breaks, you get to
> keep the pieces, it's definitely a "beware, here be dragons!" option.

If by "half-stable" you meant people that installed 100 packages and 50 
of them are unstable, I'd agree with you, they're the ones getting the 
most trouble. They can't be a stabilizer since their system is not 
"stable" but neither are they a true cutting edge adopter. But I doubt 
that there are many such people, most people that runs half-stable 
system would only have at most ~10 unstable packages (or 50 unstable 
unmasks but 40 of them are for packages that stabilizes last year).

> Of course, personally, I'm a dyed in the wool and unapologetic ~arch
> user, plus often various development overlays, unmasking various still
> hard-masked packages, etc.  To me, stable is months to sometimes years
> out of date and stale.  But I (sort of) understand folks who want stable,
> tho I honestly don't /quite/ comprehend why they're on Gentoo in that
> case, as it honestly seems to me a much slower cycling distribution like
> Debian stable or the various long term support enterprise distributions
> (Red Hat/CentOS, Novell, UbuntuLTS...) would be more appropriate if long-
> term stability is what they're after.

IMO Gentoo's edge was not about having the most cutting edge software 
(pun not intended), but rather "having a choice". With Gentoo, you get 
to choose which USE-flag to (not) include; you got to choose the kernel 
options and also to use genkernel; then you've got a choice to run a 
antiquated, full-stable, half-stable, ~arch, or overlay; you are free to 
choose how antiquated or cutting edge you want your system to be. And 
Gentoo's portage makes living the picky eater's life much easier than if 
you have to compile packages and its dependencies manually to separate 
the vegetables (or meats if you're a vegetarian; or pork if you're a 
Muslim; or cows if you're a Hindi; or whatever taboo or personal 
distrust you have).

For me, I run a mostly stable system and unmasks a few packages that I 
used most frequently since those are the software that I have the time 
to test thoroughly since I work with them all the time. I've been 
running a python 3 overlay (very unstable at that time), but I'm not 
willing to run a full ~arch since most of those software I don't use 
often enough anyway.

[gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Duncan]

Lie Ryan posted on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:08:48 +1100 as excerpted:

> IMO Gentoo's edge was not about having the most cutting edge software
> (pun not intended), but rather "having a choice". With Gentoo, you get
> to choose which USE-flag to (not) include; you got to choose the kernel
> options and also to use genkernel; then you've got a choice to run a
> antiquated, full-stable, half-stable, ~arch, or overlay; you are free to
> choose how antiquated or cutting edge you want your system to be. And
> Gentoo's portage makes living the picky eater's life much easier than if
> you have to compile packages and its dependencies manually to separate
> the vegetables (or meats if you're a vegetarian; or pork if you're a
> Muslim; or cows if you're a Hindi; or whatever taboo or personal
> distrust you have).

You're right about the choice, of course, but... well, the whole kde3 
thing has nicely illustrated the issues stable gentooers have.

To this day I'd not call kde4 ready for stable yet, and CERTAINLY not as 
stable and usable as kde-3.5.10.  4.4 should be getting close, I expect 
it'll be like a release candidate traditionally is, it could be stable if 
it had to be, but there's a few more bugs they want to kill before it's 
fully released.  4.3 is late beta, 4.2 was early beta, a LOT of SERIOUS 
bugs still hanging around, 4.1 was post-freeze alpha, and 4.0... was very 
early technology demo, mostly prototype, from a user perspective.

OTOH, with the new name and focus on devs, KDE SC /is/ really aimed at 
devs, NOT end users, with the included apps really being developer demos, 
and the kde4 versioning and kde 4.2 stability claims /does/ more 
accurately reflect that -- it's just too bad they did the versioning so 
long before they announced their target audience change, as a lot of 
users were deceived into thinking it was ready for them...

But be the upstream issues what they may, the problem for most 
distribution users including Gentoo users (and devs, BTW) is that support 
for the stable and production-ready version, kde3, ran out WAAYYYY before 
the next version, kde4, was similarly stable and production ready.

"Oh, but there's the kde-sunset overlay."

Yes, but it's officially user-only supported, that is gentoo-dev 
unsupported, because kde3 is unsupported upstream, as is the qt3 it's 
built upon, and there's no gentoo-devs interested in taking on the 
responsibility of continued support under those circumstances.  That's 
not the sort of support stable users tend to be looking for.

Meanwhile, the LTS/enterprise releases still have another year or more of 
kde3 coverage, as that's what was stable and shipping when their LTS 
product shipped (bar Ubuntu, of course, since they didn't ship an LTS 
kubuntu precisely because they foresaw exactly this sort of issues coming 
up, despite all the claims of continued support from kde at the time, 
claims that turned out to be worthless, for the ordinary distribution 
user -- but in hind sight kde was even then already refocusing their 
targetting, and weren't talking about the ordinary user any more).

But back on the topic of Gentoo.  Gentoo is and always has been a rolling 
upgrade community distribution, that reasonably closely follows 
upstream.  When upstream drops support, Gentoo, without the resources of 
the enterprise/corporate distributions, has little choice but to 
ultimately drop support as well.  Sure, the packages stay in-tree for 
awhile sometimes, but they don't actually build with modern gcc against 
modern system libs, and eventually, treecleaners or someone notices, and 
they get pulled.

That's not the sort of thing stable users enjoy, for sure.  Really, 
neither do they tend to enjoy the constant updates Gentoo has, changing 
their work environment out from under them.  Good Gentooers soon learn 
that if they're updating less than once a month, the updates DO pile up, 
and the process DOES get rough.  By three months, an upgrade gets 
difficult and stressfull, by six months, it's getting easier to start 
from a brand new stage-3, by a year, which is what Gentoo /does/ /try/ to 
support, a brand new stage-3 is generally going to be much easier than 
the exotic bugs you'll get trying to update in place.  Yet stable users 
normally /want/ their stuff stable for a year or more, and expect no 
serious problems on update within their release slot, even a year or more 
out.  The all-at-one-time release upgrade, OTOH, is assumed to be the 
normal case.  Meanwhile, gentoo support for stale packages disappears 
rather soon, relatively, and users are forced into either not updating 
any more (no security updates) or upgrading.  The enterprise/LTS 
distribution releases at least have a support timeclock that people can 
schedule their computing life around.

As I mentioned above, it took the kde3/4 fiasco to really open my eyes to 
this, but open them it most certainly did!  Generally speaking, 
enterprise and debian stable are the only ones supporting kde3 still, 
even tho kde4 isn't yet ready to fill its shoes for production machines.

> For me, I run a mostly stable system and unmasks a few packages that I
> used most frequently since those are the software that I have the time
> to test thoroughly since I work with them all the time. I've been
> running a python 3 overlay (very unstable at that time), but I'm not
> willing to run a full ~arch since most of those software I don't use
> often enough anyway.

Of course, that's where Gentoo excels.  It gives you the choice and 
ability to do just that, even if it's not that well supported.  But in 
fact, because it's so easy and so necessary for stable users at times, 
there's /enough/ people doing it, that it generally works out 
/reasonably/ well.  But still, tho the problems will be a bit different, 
I don't think running all ~arch is much different in overall problems 
than partial, or indeed, all stable, because if nothing else, hardware 
updates tend to bite all-stable people harder than all ~arch people, and 
also because stable /is/ a bit stale at times, and it's simply hard to 
remember what the fix was for that problem that happened over a year ago.

I know I've certainly experienced that myself, running the kernel rcs, 
when the release is what goes ~arch, and stable is generally a release 
behind that.  So when folks ask about kernel problems on the brand new 
stable kernel they're just upgrading to now, it's typically six months or 
more since I encountered the same issue, and I've often long since 
forgotten the details, as I'm on to newer and different problems.  The 
full release would seem to be about right, I'd think, for most users not 
wishing to push the edge, as it's at least new enough the edge pushers 
still remember the issues and how to fix them, while being old enough the 
big issues all generally have fairly well known solutions.  If I'm not 
mistaken (I run direct linus kernels and don't touch gentoo's kernel 
distribution at all, tho I know when they go stable since I follow the 
dev list and see the announcements/warnings there), current release is 
what gets ~arched for at least ~x86 and ~amd64 on Gentoo, so that's what 
I'd think would be about the best place to be, on a package I happen to 
follow reasonably closely, upstream.  Similarly for a couple others I 
follow reasonably closely upstream.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: CD drive opening on boot!!

[Lie Ryan]

On 12/24/2009 9:07 AM, Duncan wrote:
> Lie Ryan posted on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:08:48 +1100 as excerpted:
>
>> IMO Gentoo's edge was not about having the most cutting edge software
>> (pun not intended), but rather "having a choice". With Gentoo, you get
>> to choose which USE-flag to (not) include; you got to choose the kernel
>> options and also to use genkernel; then you've got a choice to run a
>> antiquated, full-stable, half-stable, ~arch, or overlay; you are free to
>> choose how antiquated or cutting edge you want your system to be. And
>> Gentoo's portage makes living the picky eater's life much easier than if
>> you have to compile packages and its dependencies manually to separate
>> the vegetables (or meats if you're a vegetarian; or pork if you're a
>> Muslim; or cows if you're a Hindi; or whatever taboo or personal
>> distrust you have).
>
> You're right about the choice, of course, but... well, the whole kde3
> thing has nicely illustrated the issues stable gentooers have.
>
> To this day I'd not call kde4 ready for stable yet, and CERTAINLY not as
> stable and usable as kde-3.5.10.  4.4 should be getting close, I expect
> it'll be like a release candidate traditionally is, it could be stable if
> it had to be, but there's a few more bugs they want to kill before it's
> fully released.  4.3 is late beta, 4.2 was early beta, a LOT of SERIOUS
> bugs still hanging around, 4.1 was post-freeze alpha, and 4.0... was very
> early technology demo, mostly prototype, from a user perspective.

well, I usually used GNOME, so I more-or-less missed the KDE chaos 
(though I heard them often).

> That's not the sort of thing stable users enjoy, for sure.  Really,
> neither do they tend to enjoy the constant updates Gentoo has, changing
> their work environment out from under them.  Good Gentooers soon learn
> that if they're updating less than once a month, the updates DO pile up,
> and the process DOES get rough.  By three months, an upgrade gets
> difficult and stressfull, by six months, it's getting easier to start
> from a brand new stage-3, by a year, which is what Gentoo /does/ /try/ to
> support, a brand new stage-3 is generally going to be much easier than
> the exotic bugs you'll get trying to update in place.  Yet stable users
> normally /want/ their stuff stable for a year or more, and expect no
> serious problems on update within their release slot, even a year or more
> out.  The all-at-one-time release upgrade, OTOH, is assumed to be the
> normal case.  Meanwhile, gentoo support for stale packages disappears
> rather soon, relatively, and users are forced into either not updating
> any more (no security updates) or upgrading.  The enterprise/LTS
> distribution releases at least have a support timeclock that people can
> schedule their computing life around.

On that point, I'd agree with you. Gentoo users have either the choice of:
1) keeping up with the rolling update every day, either the rolling 
stable or ~arch tree or a mix
2) update every 2-3 years from stage 3

but you can't update every 6-months or so with Gentoo; not smoothly 
enough. That's one thing missing from Gentoo's choice; don't know if 
anyone misses it though. Most fully stable users are in server 
environment and would go to choice #1 while most desktop/laptop users 
would use their computer everyday to keep up with daily updates. That 
sort of implies people that only uses their computer occasionally (once 
or twice a month?) is not suitable for Gentoo. Those kind of users 
aren't really Gentoo's target users, so I doubt there is a significant 
portion of people that fell into this third category.

> As I mentioned above, it took the kde3/4 fiasco to really open my eyes to
> this, but open them it most certainly did!  Generally speaking,
> enterprise and debian stable are the only ones supporting kde3 still,
> even tho kde4 isn't yet ready to fill its shoes for production machines.
>
>> For me, I run a mostly stable system and unmasks a few packages that I
>> used most frequently since those are the software that I have the time
>> to test thoroughly since I work with them all the time. I've been
>> running a python 3 overlay (very unstable at that time), but I'm not
>> willing to run a full ~arch since most of those software I don't use
>> often enough anyway.
>
> Of course, that's where Gentoo excels.  It gives you the choice and
> ability to do just that, even if it's not that well supported.  But in
> fact, because it's so easy

Put that *because it's so easy* in bold; gentoo's portage makes such 
setup easy, your "choice" is never limited by tools that is hard-coded 
to makes such setup difficult to manage.

> and so necessary for stable users at times,
> there's /enough/ people doing it, that it generally works out
> /reasonably/ well.

that's why I love the easy part.