[gentoo-amd64] Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[gentoo-amd64] Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Martin Herrman]

Dear Gentoo-users,

I want to install gentoo on my brand new quadcore, following the amd64
handbook install manual. $emerge gentoo-sources fails:

>>> Preparing to unpack ...
ACCESS DENIED open_wr: /*G??Zn?W??%??

Where ? is actually a white quadrangle..

Next:

/var/tmp/portage/sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r7/tmp/environment:
line 1: blabla (unreadable): Permission denied, and next an unexpected
EOF message.

Next:

an error on ebuild.sh line 1641.

I discovered that the tmp/environment file seems to contain some
binary data at the first four rows.

$ dmesg

shows a lot of weird characters, and after that I can't use this
console anymore.

Also the /var/log/sandbox/sandbox-?????.log file seems to contain binary data.

What's going on?

My system is a Q9300 and I use two similar disks in raid-1 (/boot) and
raid-0 (/).

My problems seem to be identical to the ones mentioned here:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=236641

BTW, irc.freenode.org doesn't seem to be alive, is it down?

Thanks in advance!

Martin

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Duncan]

"Martin Herrman" <martin@herrman.nl> posted
40bb8d3b0810191143n628adc43n644e0c4e5686bc3d@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:43:20 +0200:

> I want to install gentoo on my brand new quadcore, following the amd64
> handbook install manual. $emerge gentoo-sources fails:

I don't know why you're getting binary data in your environment, unless 
it perhaps has to do with unicode or the like.

Since I know bash scripting reasonably well (well enough to debug and 
write my own when necessary), I'd probably modify the ebuild and/or 
eclasses as necessary to trace it down, as I have with various other 
problems with ebuilds and initscripts over the years. (FWIW, taking apart 
initscripts back on Mandrake, in the 8.x era, was how I /learned/ bash.)  
However, that's not likely to work so well if you don't know bash and 
aren't inclined to try to learn it at this point.

However, all that said, you're in luck to some extent, as it's the kernel 
you're having problems with, and it really doesn't matter where or how 
you get your kernel.  Here, I already knew how to configure and build my 
own mainline kernel.org vanilla kernel (having learned in those first few 
weeks after switching to Linux, again, back on Mandrake), so I simply 
stuck whatever kernel the system decided it wanted in 
/etc/portage/profile/package.provided so portage didn't try to install 
it, and did my usual kernel.org kernel download, make oldconfig, build 
and install routine, much as I did back on Mandrake, with only a couple 
changes as appropriate for my then new Gentoo install.

So I'd suggest doing similar.  Download, configure, build and install 
whatever kernel you like, say the mainline Linus kernel.org kernel, stick 
a line in package.provided to tell portage not to worry about the kernel, 
and don't worry about the ebuild failure.  Of course, doing it the first 
time while learning how will take some time, and your first kernel or two 
(or three or five or...) may not boot, and the next set may boot but be 
missing functionality if you were conservative in what you configured or 
you'll be building extra if you were liberal in what you configured, but 
there are good instructions for the basics, you can check to see what's 
loaded in your running (livecd or whatever) kernel and use that as a base 
config, and the second time will be easier, the third time easier than 
that, and before you know it, it'll be old hat.  (Still, I sometimes 
wonder what the new config options do when I update and configure a new 
kernel, but it's fairly safe to say configure all new hardware out once 
you get a kernel configured for your system, and on the general 
functionality, configure it the best you can, and if it doesn't boot, or 
does but is missing something you need, boot back to the old kernel if 
necessary, change that bit of the config, rebuild, and retry.)

Yes, all this a challenge and will take some time, but then you'll be 
left with a system better configured to your specific needs and a better 
understanding of how it works and what to do to fix it when it breaks. 
Gentoo was always targeted at the person who wasn't afraid of a bit of 
learning now and then.  If you're more comfortable with the distribution 
making those types of decisions and shipping prebuilt binaries for you, 
lots of other distributions out there will be a much better fit for you 
than Gentoo.

-- 
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: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Martin Herrman]

Hi Duncan,

first of all: thanks for your extensive reply!

In the mean while I have survived today's traffic jams and got back
home to dive into this problem again.

I came up with the idea that maybe burning the iso image to CD has
failed, so I downloaded the iso again and... discovered that I was
using 2008.0 instead of 2008.0-r1.. So I downloaded the latest one,
burned it on CD and started the install again. Emerging the kernel
sources now works :-)

I have used slackware, redhat, mandrake and debian before (in that
order) and about 2 years ago switched to Ubuntu because it was so easy
to use. But it's also bloated (it is even hard to compile your own
kernel) and that's why I started to use Gentoo 2 months ago on my
notebook. I liked it (compared to FreeBSD: that ports system is
documented so badly..)!

I plan to compile my own kernel (as I did years ago before using
ubuntu), but are currently using genkernel to have my system at least
running well. When install is finished, I will configure the kernel on
my own.

Thanks for your help so far!

Regards,

Martin

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
> "Martin Herrman" <martin@herrman.nl> posted
> 40bb8d3b0810191143n628adc43n644e0c4e5686bc3d@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
> below, on  Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:43:20 +0200:
>
>> I want to install gentoo on my brand new quadcore, following the amd64
>> handbook install manual. $emerge gentoo-sources fails:
>
> I don't know why you're getting binary data in your environment, unless
> it perhaps has to do with unicode or the like.
>
> Since I know bash scripting reasonably well (well enough to debug and
> write my own when necessary), I'd probably modify the ebuild and/or
> eclasses as necessary to trace it down, as I have with various other
> problems with ebuilds and initscripts over the years. (FWIW, taking apart
> initscripts back on Mandrake, in the 8.x era, was how I /learned/ bash.)
> However, that's not likely to work so well if you don't know bash and
> aren't inclined to try to learn it at this point.
>
> However, all that said, you're in luck to some extent, as it's the kernel
> you're having problems with, and it really doesn't matter where or how
> you get your kernel.  Here, I already knew how to configure and build my
> own mainline kernel.org vanilla kernel (having learned in those first few
> weeks after switching to Linux, again, back on Mandrake), so I simply
> stuck whatever kernel the system decided it wanted in
> /etc/portage/profile/package.provided so portage didn't try to install
> it, and did my usual kernel.org kernel download, make oldconfig, build
> and install routine, much as I did back on Mandrake, with only a couple
> changes as appropriate for my then new Gentoo install.
>
> So I'd suggest doing similar.  Download, configure, build and install
> whatever kernel you like, say the mainline Linus kernel.org kernel, stick
> a line in package.provided to tell portage not to worry about the kernel,
> and don't worry about the ebuild failure.  Of course, doing it the first
> time while learning how will take some time, and your first kernel or two
> (or three or five or...) may not boot, and the next set may boot but be
> missing functionality if you were conservative in what you configured or
> you'll be building extra if you were liberal in what you configured, but
> there are good instructions for the basics, you can check to see what's
> loaded in your running (livecd or whatever) kernel and use that as a base
> config, and the second time will be easier, the third time easier than
> that, and before you know it, it'll be old hat.  (Still, I sometimes
> wonder what the new config options do when I update and configure a new
> kernel, but it's fairly safe to say configure all new hardware out once
> you get a kernel configured for your system, and on the general
> functionality, configure it the best you can, and if it doesn't boot, or
> does but is missing something you need, boot back to the old kernel if
> necessary, change that bit of the config, rebuild, and retry.)
>
> Yes, all this a challenge and will take some time, but then you'll be
> left with a system better configured to your specific needs and a better
> understanding of how it works and what to do to fix it when it breaks.
> Gentoo was always targeted at the person who wasn't afraid of a bit of
> learning now and then.  If you're more comfortable with the distribution
> making those types of decisions and shipping prebuilt binaries for you,
> lots of other distributions out there will be a much better fit for you
> than Gentoo.
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>

[gentoo-amd64] Re: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Duncan]

"Martin Herrman" <martin@herrman.nl> posted
40bb8d3b0810201037q75b3cb5dkaf16b5a6a5f5dd73@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:37:15 +0200:

> I came up with the idea that maybe burning the iso image to CD has
> failed, so I downloaded the iso again and... discovered that I was using
> 2008.0 instead of 2008.0-r1.. So I downloaded the latest one, burned it
> on CD and started the install again. Emerging the kernel sources now
> works :-)

Hmm...  I hadn't thought of a bad ISO image or burn.  I guess I take it 
for granted that people verify the md5 and/or gpg sig.  I know I always 
do on such downloads.  (Portage of course verifies ebuilds and tarballs, 
tho AFAIK not the eclasses or profiles.)

I'm glad the -r1 worked for you, tho.  FWIW, since Gentooers generally 
incrementally update, those LiveCDs and stages don't always get as well 
tested as they should.  Particularly the LiveCDs, since people can 
install from other Linux instead (as I did, back in 2004).

FWIW, I'm going to be doing an install of my own pretty soon.  AA1 (Acer 
Aspire One) netbook.  But I plan to create an image on my main machine 
(dual dual-core Opteron, 8 gigs RAM, 4-way kernel/md RAID, yada yada, 
obviously the one I want to compile on compared to the puny netbook) and 
more or less just copy it over.  So I'll be using a LiveCD (actually 
LiveThumbdrive) of some sort, maybe Gentoo's maybe something else, to do 
the partitioning and copying, but build the stuff to copy from x86 stages 
on my existing amd64 machine, in a 32-bit chroot.

Once that (relatively mild) challenge is conquered, I'm /contemplating/ 
(but haven't really looked into yet) a /real/ challenge, cross-compiling 
Gentoo to run on my Linksys WRT54GL router (200 MHz mipsel, 4 meg flash, 
16 meg ram, tho there's a hardware mod to add an sdcard for several gigs 
of (removable) storage that I'm looking at), currently running OpenWrt.  
OpenWrt is nice and has a lot of flexibility... but it has been /years/ 
since I used that sort of init system, and I just like the idea of having 
Gentoo on it. =:^)  Obviously, that'd be a cross-compile from my main 
machine as well, tho equally obviously, it'd be a /much/ slimmed down 
version I actually installed, and I'd not be worried about compiling 
everything and its brother to run on it, narrowing the challenge a bit.

> I have used slackware, redhat, mandrake and debian before (in that
> order) and about 2 years ago switched to Ubuntu because it was so easy
> to use. But it's also bloated (it is even hard to compile your own
> kernel) and that's why I started to use Gentoo 2 months ago on my
> notebook. I liked it (compared to FreeBSD: that ports system is
> documented so badly..)!

Interesting.  There's a BSD guy on my ISP's (Cox) newsgroups that keeps 
telling me how much better they are.  Philosophically I'm a copyleft guy, 
so the BSDs don't so interest me, but it's interesting to hear the other 
side of the story after seeing his pro-BSD comments for so long.  FWIW, 
there's a Gentoo/FBSD alternative if you're interested in that sort of 
thing.  It's basically Gentoo's ebuild system on a FBSD kernel.  AFAIK, 
you can either go GNU userspace and just run the FBSD kernel, or run 
mainly FBSD, but with the prefix portage and packages and its basic GNU 
dependencies (bash, and there may be other GNU dependencies as well, I'm 
not sure) as an alternative packaging system, not replacing the main FBSD 
system.  There are similar Gentoo-prefix ports in various stages of 
maturity for OSX and I believe OpenSolaris, among others.

> I plan to compile my own kernel (as I did years ago before using
> ubuntu), but are currently using genkernel to have my system at least
> running well. When install is finished, I will configure the kernel on
> my own.

That makes sense.  When I did it, I just figured why go to the trouble of 
figuring out genkernel, when I already knew how to do my own kernels, so 
that's what I did, bypassed genkernel entirely, and did my own kernel.  
For the first year or so tho, I continued to use the Mandrake lilo 
bootloader (binary simply copied over to my Gentoo install), as grub 
wasn't yet popular when I started on Mandrake and I didn't learn it until 
some time after I was on Gentoo, but lilo wasn't yet available on Gentoo 
64-bit.

Gentoo's nice for those that like to tweak and don't like the bloat of 
most binary distributions but want the packages the thin ones don't 
have.  But the first install to a system (even if it's your second or 
more system with Gentoo) can be a monster!

-- 
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: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Michael Moore]

On 19:37 Mon 20 Oct     , Martin Herrman wrote:
> I have used slackware, redhat, mandrake and debian before (in that
> order) and about 2 years ago switched to Ubuntu because it was so easy
> to use. But it's also bloated (it is even hard to compile your own
> kernel) and that's why I started to use Gentoo 2 months ago on my
> notebook. I liked it (compared to FreeBSD: that ports system is
> documented so badly..)!

Surprised to hear that, because quite a lot of people (including yours
truly) find FreeBSD and Gentoo to be couple of the most well documented
systems.

So, what was the exact problem you had with the ports documentation?

-- 

Regards,
Michael Moore <mikem.unet(at)gmail.com>
About *NIX: If its not fun, why do it?

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Martin Herrman]

Hi Michael and Duncan,

you two had send me a reply some time ago, but I didn't had the time
to reply. Well, here it is :-)

In the mean time my desktop is 'fully' functional, at least I can do
my usual stuff on it.

Of course I have had some issues that needed to be solved:
- forgot to include USB HID support in my kernel :-)
- network-adapter driver is broken is current gentoo sources, so I had
to take kernel.org's 2.6.27.4
- radeon driver didn't recognise video-chip (yeah, had to unmask
radeonhd driver..)
- wireless card required firmware in /lib/firmware
- ... lots I already forgot..
But it could all be solved within minutes or in some cases within a
small couple of hours!

That takes me to the issues I have experienced with FreeBSD: although
it looks like a very well-documented (and centralised!) system, I had
problems understanding e.g. the ports way of installing software. I
had lot's of errors, which I couldn't solve. I think that Gentoo's
user-base is much larger, which makes it easier to find solutions and
bug-reports online. But also the messages shown at e.g. the output of
emerge help a lot. In FreeBSD I also had trouble to do a full system
upgrade: what are the command's you should use in what sequence? I had
that information avaialble for gentoo in minutes.
Maybe I do not have an objective view, because I know Linux quite well
and FreeBSD is totally new to me.

Best regards,

Martin

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Michael Moore <mikem.unet@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19:37 Mon 20 Oct     , Martin Herrman wrote:
>> I have used slackware, redhat, mandrake and debian before (in that
>> order) and about 2 years ago switched to Ubuntu because it was so easy
>> to use. But it's also bloated (it is even hard to compile your own
>> kernel) and that's why I started to use Gentoo 2 months ago on my
>> notebook. I liked it (compared to FreeBSD: that ports system is
>> documented so badly..)!
>
> Surprised to hear that, because quite a lot of people (including yours
> truly) find FreeBSD and Gentoo to be couple of the most well documented
> systems.
>
> So, what was the exact problem you had with the ports documentation?
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> Michael Moore <mikem.unet(at)gmail.com>
> About *NIX: If its not fun, why do it?
>
>

Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Fwd: [install] emerge gentoo-sources fails

[Michael Moore]

On 19:51 Sun 02 Nov     , Martin Herrman wrote:
> That takes me to the issues I have experienced with FreeBSD: although
> it looks like a very well-documented (and centralised!) system, I had
> problems understanding e.g. the ports way of installing software. I
> had lot's of errors, which I couldn't solve. I think that Gentoo's
> user-base is much larger, which makes it easier to find solutions and
> bug-reports online. But also the messages shown at e.g. the output of
> emerge help a lot. In FreeBSD I also had trouble to do a full system
> upgrade: what are the command's you should use in what sequence? I had
> that information avaialble for gentoo in minutes.
> Maybe I do not have an objective view, because I know Linux quite well
> and FreeBSD is totally new to me.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Martin
> 
Hi Martin,

In a nutshell you could say that Gentoo Linux has a highly refined
implementation of the methods of FreeBSD (though at the core they 
are two totally different systems- technically & philosophically).
It includes an excellent package manager and a lot of well polished
tools (eselect et al.) which make system administration less of a 
chore and infact a highly easy job (contrary to popular belief). 
This is one of the reasons i love Gentoo Linux -- it provides the 
power without putting you into too much of an inconvenience. But 
that doesn't take anything away from FreeBSD, which has managed to 
still follow the KISS Principle and keep things fairly well integrated.

As regards the emerge output, you would realise that the make output of
the ports system isn't different. And as for the update just read the
docs. You would find out that a world update in FreeBSD is quite similar
to others, provided if you get the knowhow about userland and system.

But, anyways both are quite different systems so, please don't view
anyone with any kind of prejudice. I am not trying to profess any particular
system but, you should only criticise something once you are fairly well versed
with it.

-- 

Michael Moore <mikem.unet(at)gmail.com>
About *NIX: If its not fun, why do it?