[gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, excellent people!

Having got X11 installed and "working", I need a window manager.  Why
not XFCE, as supplied on the installation disk?

# emerge xfce didn't work - "Portage: Don't know what xfce is".
Scrabbled aroud /usr/portage, then # emerge xfce4 started working.

Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce?  Anyhow, that's a minor
point.

The major point was that portage refused to install xfce because it said
that

    [blocks B     ] net-print/lprng (is blocking net-print/cups-1.3.7-r1)
    [blocks B     ] net-print/cups (is blocking net-print/lprng-3.8.28)

     * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
     * installed at the same time on the same system.

.  I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print program
and put in cups instead.  This is a bit of a cheek!

Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon", rather
than specifically cups?  For that matter, why must it install a print
daemon at all?  Not every X user has a printer or wants to print.

What can I do about this?  I really don't want to have to install cups.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Sebastian Günther]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1920 bytes --]

* Alan Mackenzie (acm@muc.de) [24.07.08 11:42]:
> Hi, excellent people!
> 
> Having got X11 installed and "working", I need a window manager.  Why
> not XFCE, as supplied on the installation disk?
> 
> # emerge xfce didn't work - "Portage: Don't know what xfce is".
> Scrabbled aroud /usr/portage, then # emerge xfce4 started working.
> 
> Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce?  Anyhow, that's a minor
> point.
> 
Just a tip: maybe you should use emerge -s for such things, or eix.
And iirc there were older xfce implementation besides xfce4 in the tree

> The major point was that portage refused to install xfce because it said
> that
> 
>     [blocks B     ] net-print/lprng (is blocking net-print/cups-1.3.7-r1)
>     [blocks B     ] net-print/cups (is blocking net-print/lprng-3.8.28)
> 
>      * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
>      * installed at the same time on the same system.
> 
> .  I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print program
> and put in cups instead.  This is a bit of a cheek!
> 
> Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon", rather
> than specifically cups?  For that matter, why must it install a print
> daemon at all?  Not every X user has a printer or wants to print.
> 
> What can I do about this?  I really don't want to have to install cups.
> 

xfce4 is just a meta package, meaning the only purpose is to give you 
dependencies on the real packages. And this dependencies are quite 
general to meet the most people's needs.

Just look in the ebuild to get a starting point. And now by doing it 
myself, I see that it honors the cups useflag. It maybe enable by your 
profile. So disabling it might resolve your problem.

HTH
Sebastian

-- 
 " Religion ist das Opium des Volkes. "      Karl Marx

 SEB@STI@N GÜNTHER         mailto:samson@guenther-roetgen.de

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Sebastian,

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 12:07:35PM +0200, Sebastian Günther wrote:
> * Alan Mackenzie (acm@muc.de) [24.07.08 11:42]:

> > Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce?  Anyhow, that's a minor
> > point.

> Just a tip: maybe you should use emerge -s for such things, or eix.
> And iirc there were older xfce implementation besides xfce4 in the tree

OK.

[ .... ]

> > .  I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print
> > program and put in cups instead.  This is a bit of a cheek!

> > Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon",
> > rather than specifically cups?  For that matter, why must it install
> > a print daemon at all?  Not every X user has a printer or wants to
> > print.

> > What can I do about this?  I really don't want to have to install cups.

> xfce4 is just a meta package, meaning the only purpose is to give you 
> dependencies on the real packages. And this dependencies are quite 
> general to meet the most people's needs.

> Just look in the ebuild to get a starting point. And now by doing it 
> myself, I see that it honors the cups useflag. It maybe enabled by your
> profile. So disabling it might resolve your problem.

I'm still very confused by profiles, though I obviously need to get to
grips with them.  What is a profile, _EXACTLY_?  Where in the
documentation can I find a description which says something like ".... a
profile is a directory which contains the following files" and then lists
them?  There are lots of instructions to "set foobar in your profile",
but the only description I've found so far just says "A profile is a
building block for any Gentoo system" in the Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook,
and then goes on to describe what a profile _does_ in abstract terms but
not what it _is_ in terms of directories and files.  That section says
that I "have" the option of choosing another profile too, but not how to
recognise a profile from a random directory or file.  I don't understand
how to select it.

I have a link 

    /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0

, set up as suggested in the handbook.  Is .../2008.0 my profile?  Is
this valid?  There doesn't appear to be anything of substance there.

On the other hand the handbook says a few lines lowere, I should select a
profile with:

   # ln -snf /usr/portage/profiles/<profile name>   /etc/make.profile.

In that directory, /usr/portage/profiles, there are both subdirectories
(e.g. default-linux) and some files (e.g., make.defaults,
packages.builds).  Is "<profile name>" one of the directories rather than
a file?  It looks almost as though there's some sort of hierarchical
inheritance going on.

Please tell me that this is clearly explained somewhere.

Thanks!

> Sebastian

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Sebastian Günther]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2596 bytes --]

* Alan Mackenzie (acm@muc.de) [24.07.08 23:02]:
> Hi, Sebastian,
> 

I don't know where it is explained, but I try to explain what I know 
until now about this.

> I'm still very confused by profiles, though I obviously need to get to
> grips with them.  What is a profile, _EXACTLY_?  Where in the
> documentation can I find a description which says something like ".... a
> profile is a directory which contains the following files" and then lists
> them?  There are lots of instructions to "set foobar in your profile",
> but the only description I've found so far just says "A profile is a
> building block for any Gentoo system" in the Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook,
> and then goes on to describe what a profile _does_ in abstract terms but
> not what it _is_ in terms of directories and files.  That section says
> that I "have" the option of choosing another profile too, but not how to
> recognise a profile from a random directory or file.  I don't understand
> how to select it.
> 
You select your profile by choosing a directory (in any depth) under 
/usr/portage/profiles link it to /etc/make.profile.

> I have a link 
> 
>     /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0
> 
> , set up as suggested in the handbook.  Is .../2008.0 my profile?  Is
> this valid?  There doesn't appear to be anything of substance there.
> 
your profile is default/linux/x86/2008.0

> On the other hand the handbook says a few lines lowere, I should select a
> profile with:
> 
>    # ln -snf /usr/portage/profiles/<profile name>   /etc/make.profile.
> 
> In that directory, /usr/portage/profiles, there are both subdirectories
> (e.g. default-linux) and some files (e.g., make.defaults,
> packages.builds).  Is "<profile name>" one of the directories rather than
> a file?  It looks almost as though there's some sort of hierarchical
> inheritance going on.
> 

portage recurses upwards to /usr/portage/profiles and read all files in 
the directories on the way upwards. So every file in 
/etc/portage/profiles is member of all profiles and what is found on the 
way down to your choosen directory is *added* to your specific profile.

So by choosing a profile you choose a stepwise "patch way" to the files 
in /usr/portage/profile

> Please tell me that this is clearly explained somewhere.
> 

Sorry no links I know of.

> Thanks!
> 

HTH
Sebastian

BTT: What does "euse -i cups" state?

-- 
 " Religion ist das Opium des Volkes. "      Karl Marx

 SEB@STI@N GÜNTHER         mailto:samson@guenther-roetgen.de

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Sebastian!

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 11:45:34PM +0200, Sebastian Günther wrote:
> * Alan Mackenzie (acm@muc.de) [24.07.08 23:02]:
> > Hi, Sebastian,

> I don't know where it is explained, but I try to explain what I know 
> until now about this.

> > I'm still very confused by profiles, though I obviously need to get
> > to grips with them.  What is a profile, _EXACTLY_? .....

> You select your profile by choosing a directory (in any depth) under
> /usr/portage/profiles link it to /etc/make.profile.

[ .... ]

> portage recurses upwards to /usr/portage/profiles and read all files in 
> the directories on the way upwards. So every file in 
> /etc/portage/profiles is member of all profiles and what is found on the 
> way down to your choosen directory is *added* to your specific profile.

Now I understand!  :-)

> So by choosing a profile you choose a stepwise "patch way" to the files
> in /usr/portage/profile

> > Please tell me that this is clearly explained somewhere.

> Sorry no links I know of.

I've submitted a bug report (#232903) on the Linux x86 Handbook, asking
for profiles to be described better.

I think that now I understand about profiles, my original problem with
cups/lprng fighting will melt away with a bit of editing.

Thanks to all!

> Sebastian

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Dale]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>
> I think that now I understand about profiles, my original problem with
> cups/lprng fighting will melt away with a bit of editing.
>
> Thanks to all!
>   

Just in case you are talking about editing the files in profiles, that 
won't work long term.  Keep in mind that each time you run emerge --sync 
those files will be overwritten.  It is not a good idea to edit anything 
in /usr/portage since it will update when you sync again.

If you want to enable/disable features in the profiles, do that in 
make.conf instead.  That is where you put in your final wishes.  
Example:  cups is enabled as a USE flag in the profile and you do not 
want cups enabled.  Put -cups in your make.conf and it should be 
disabled.  The reverse is also true.  If you want cups but it is 
disabled in the profile, you can add cups to your USE line in make.conf 
and it will be enabled.

Hope that helps.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] FIXED!! Re: Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. But ran out of inodes. :-(

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Dale and everybody else!

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 05:23:59AM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> Just in case you are talking about editing the files in profiles, that
> won't work long term.  Keep in mind that each time you run emerge
> --sync those files will be overwritten.  It is not a good idea to edit
> anything in /usr/portage since it will update when you sync again.

> If you want to enable/disable features in the profiles, do that in 
> make.conf instead.

DONE.  It worked too, after fixing another problem (see below).

> That is where you put in your final wishes.  Example:  cups is enabled
> as a USE flag in the profile and you do not want cups enabled.  Put
> -cups in your make.conf and it should be disabled.  The reverse is also
> true.  If you want cups but it is disabled in the profile, you can add
> cups to your USE line in make.conf and it will be enabled.

> Hope that helps.

It helped a great deal, thanks!

With about 9 packages to go, I started getting disk full messages, even
though my (sole) partition had well over 1Gb free.  It turns out I'd ran
out of inodes.  Curious.  But the only "application" which has any data
at all yet is portage.  ;-)

I haven't looked in detail where all these little files are - I suspect
they're largely under /var - but dumpe2fs /dev/hdh5 gave:

    Inode count:              250976         <=======
    Block count:              1002046
    Reserved block count:     50102
    Free blocks:              354807
    Free inodes:              58             <=======
    First block:              0
    Block size:               4096
    Fragment size:            4096

It seems I have 250,918 files in ~650,000 blocks.  That's a _lot_ of
files, most of them flea sized.

So I formatted another ext3 partitions, with 2048 byte blocks and
~1,000,000 inodes, copied all the files across, rebooted into Gentoo and
I was able to finish intalling xfce4.  It's nice!  I need to get firefox
now, and I'll probably let that run overnight.  ;-)

Comparing the two partions with df immediately after the bulk copy, I got
this:

    Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
    /dev/hdh5              3945128   2525880   1218840  68% /mnt/hdh5   <== Old
    /dev/hdh10             3882172   2069020   1612744  57% /mnt/hdh10  <== New

Maybe 1024 byte blocks would have been even better.  Or would it be a
good idea to format the partition-with-all-the-little-files with Reiser.
Does Reiserfs have static limits on numbers of files?  It's supposed to
be very good at handling lots of midget files.

> Dale

> :-)  :-) 

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] FIXED!! Re: Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. But ran out of inodes. :-(

[Dale]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Dale and everybody else!
>
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 05:23:59AM -0500, Dale wrote:
>   
>> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>     
>
>   
>> Just in case you are talking about editing the files in profiles, that
>> won't work long term.  Keep in mind that each time you run emerge
>> --sync those files will be overwritten.  It is not a good idea to edit
>> anything in /usr/portage since it will update when you sync again.
>>     
>
>   
>> If you want to enable/disable features in the profiles, do that in 
>> make.conf instead.
>>     
>
> DONE.  It worked too, after fixing another problem (see below).
>
>   
>> That is where you put in your final wishes.  Example:  cups is enabled
>> as a USE flag in the profile and you do not want cups enabled.  Put
>> -cups in your make.conf and it should be disabled.  The reverse is also
>> true.  If you want cups but it is disabled in the profile, you can add
>> cups to your USE line in make.conf and it will be enabled.
>>     
>
>   
>> Hope that helps.
>>     
>
> It helped a great deal, thanks!
>
> With about 9 packages to go, I started getting disk full messages, even
> though my (sole) partition had well over 1Gb free.  It turns out I'd ran
> out of inodes.  Curious.  But the only "application" which has any data
> at all yet is portage.  ;-)
>
> I haven't looked in detail where all these little files are - I suspect
> they're largely under /var - but dumpe2fs /dev/hdh5 gave:
>
>     Inode count:              250976         <=======
>     Block count:              1002046
>     Reserved block count:     50102
>     Free blocks:              354807
>     Free inodes:              58             <=======
>     First block:              0
>     Block size:               4096
>     Fragment size:            4096
>
> It seems I have 250,918 files in ~650,000 blocks.  That's a _lot_ of
> files, most of them flea sized.
>
> So I formatted another ext3 partitions, with 2048 byte blocks and
> ~1,000,000 inodes, copied all the files across, rebooted into Gentoo and
> I was able to finish intalling xfce4.  It's nice!  I need to get firefox
> now, and I'll probably let that run overnight.  ;-)
>
> Comparing the two partions with df immediately after the bulk copy, I got
> this:
>
>     Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
>     /dev/hdh5              3945128   2525880   1218840  68% /mnt/hdh5   <== Old
>     /dev/hdh10             3882172   2069020   1612744  57% /mnt/hdh10  <== New
>
> Maybe 1024 byte blocks would have been even better.  Or would it be a
> good idea to format the partition-with-all-the-little-files with Reiser.
> Does Reiserfs have static limits on numbers of files?  It's supposed to
> be very good at handling lots of midget files.
>
>   
>> Dale
>>     
>
>   
>> :-)  :-) 
>>     
>
>   

I'm glad I finally opened my mouth and helped someone.  O_O  Miracles 
still happen.

How do you run out of inodes anyway?  I use reiserfs for most partitions 
except /boot and portage.  My /data partition has 75,000 files and 3,600 
directories.  No problems so far but not near as many files as you have.

Maybe a file system guru will come along.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] FIXED!! Re: Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. But ran out of inodes. :-(

[Matthias Bethke]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1084 bytes --]

Hi Dale,
on Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 03:44:54PM -0500, you wrote:
> How do you run out of inodes anyway?  I use reiserfs for most partitions 
> except /boot and portage.  My /data partition has 75,000 files and 3,600 
> directories.  No problems so far but not near as many files as you have.

You can adjust the number of inodes to create at mkfs using -i, -N or -T
which are just different ways of doing the same thing. Lowering the
number of inodes wastes less disk space if you know you're not going to
write many files anyway. This feature bit me once when I set up a
-Tlargefile4 partition (i.e. one inode per 4 MiB of disk) for videos. As
it happens, I had to misuse it for backups at some point and was very
puzzled when df showed 3% used space but even "touch" gave me a "no space
left on device" error. tarring the stuff I had planned to just copy
solved it and would prolly have been faster in the first place :)

cheers,
	Matthias
-- 
I prefer encrypted and signed messages. KeyID: FAC37665
Fingerprint: 8C16 3F0A A6FC DF0D 19B0  8DEF 48D9 1700 FAC3 7665

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1528 bytes --]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:01:12 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> I'm still very confused by profiles, though I obviously need to get to
> grips with them.  What is a profile, _EXACTLY_?  Where in the
> documentation can I find a description which says something like ".... a
> profile is a directory which contains the following files" and then
> lists them?  There are lots of instructions to "set foobar in your
> profile", but the only description I've found so far just says "A
> profile is a building block for any Gentoo system" in the Gentoo Linux
> x86 Handbook, and then goes on to describe what a profile _does_ in
> abstract terms but not what it _is_ in terms of directories and files.

See man portage for a description of the individual files that make up a
profile.

> That section says that I "have" the option of choosing another profile
> too, but not how to recognise a profile from a random directory or
> file.  I don't understand how to select it.
> 
> I have a link 
> 
>     /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0
> 
> , set up as suggested in the handbook.  Is .../2008.0 my profile?  Is
> this valid?  There doesn't appear to be anything of substance there.

That's certainly a valid profile. You may find it easier to use eselect
to manage your profiles, then you know you are always using a valid
profile, even if it may not be the best one for you.

eselect profile list
eselect profile help


-- 
Neil Bothwick

c:>Press Enter to Exit

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 197 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Alan McKinnon]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4291 bytes --]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:

>
>
> I'm still very confused by profiles, though I obviously need to get to
> grips with them.  What is a profile, _EXACTLY_?  Where in the
> documentation can I find a description which says something like ".... a
> profile is a directory which contains the following files" and then lists
> them?  There are lots of instructions to "set foobar in your profile",
> but the only description I've found so far just says "A profile is a
> building block for any Gentoo system" in the Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook,
> and then goes on to describe what a profile _does_ in abstract terms but
> not what it _is_ in terms of directories and files.  That section says
> that I "have" the option of choosing another profile too, but not how to
> recognise a profile from a random directory or file.  I don't understand
> how to select it.


A profile is a starting point for a gentoo install, and a set of defaults.
They are stored in  $PORTDIR/profiles in a sensible hierarchical structure
and contain information like default USE flags, the full collection of
packages
that make up the system set etc etc. Profiles are obviously tweaked to suit
the average needs of categories of users, so there are desktop and server
profiles. They also cascade which is to say a profile inherits common stuff
from it's parent profile (which minimizes the admin hassle of adding the
 same new stuff to every profile in existence)

Setting a profile is a simply matter of creating  the symlink as you have
done here:

>
>
> I have a link
>
>    /etc/make.profile -> /usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/x86/2008.0
>
> , set up as suggested in the handbook.  Is .../2008.0 my profile?


Yes, this means the profile you are using is the 2008.0 profile for x86


> Is
> this valid?  There doesn't appear to be anything of substance there.


If you navigate to the directory the symlink points to, you will find a
bunch of files.
These define the profile, and the names and contents are by and large quite
self-explanatory

>
> On the other hand the handbook says a few lines lowere, I should select a
> profile with:
>
>   # ln -snf /usr/portage/profiles/<profile name>   /etc/make.profile.
>
> In that directory, /usr/portage/profiles, there are both subdirectories
> (e.g. default-linux) and some files (e.g., make.defaults,
> packages.builds).  Is "<profile name>" one of the directories rather than
> a file?  It looks almost as though there's some sort of hierarchical
> inheritance going on.


Correct. The profile is a directory name


> Please tell me that this is clearly explained somewhere.


The handbook tells you all you need to know actually. Perhaps you are
reading
more into the matter than is actually there.

As I said above, a profile is nothing more than the definition of a starting
point
and a bunch of defaults that are applied if you don't explicitly state what
you want.
When you installed gentoo, you might have run 'emerge -e system' which would

have built a whole bunch of stuff (toolchain, coreutils, etc, etc) with a
bunch of
USE flags already enabled. That info came out of the profile. When you edit
make.conf
to better suit YOUR needs, that edit overrides the profile. You hardly ever
need to
change your profile unless it is many years old and has been removed from
portage.
The longer you use gentoo, the more specific your system becomes to what you
want,
and the further away it moves from the default.

What you do do, is edit make.conf and the various files in /etc/portage/* to
get what you want.
Don't go editing the profile directories, your changes simply get nuked with
the next
'emerge --sync'. Only edit the user files, which are documented in 'man 5
portage'

In four years of using gentoo I have had to mess around with profiles
exactly once.
I was building a highly customized install that is quite radically different
from the norm,
so I created a custom profile inherited from the one that was closest to
what I wanted,
stored it somewhere out of the way and pointed portage to it. In all other
cases I just used
what was there. I couldn;t even tell you right now what profile my home
machine is using :-)

Hope this help clear up the situation for you.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5674 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 24 July 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, excellent people!
>
> Having got X11 installed and "working", I need a window manager.  Why
> not XFCE, as supplied on the installation disk?
>
> # emerge xfce didn't work - "Portage: Don't know what xfce is".
> Scrabbled aroud /usr/portage, then # emerge xfce4 started working.
>
> Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce?  Anyhow, that's a minor
> point.

I don't know why, it probably the official name of the upstream project, 
like kde4 really is kde4 not kde. Names are arbitrary anyway. Why the 
name xfce? Maybe it means something, it probaly doesn't

> The major point was that portage refused to install xfce because it
> said that
>
>     [blocks B     ] net-print/lprng (is blocking
> net-print/cups-1.3.7-r1) [blocks B     ] net-print/cups (is blocking
> net-print/lprng-3.8.28)
>
>      * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot
> be * installed at the same time on the same system.
>
> .  I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print
> program and put in cups instead.  This is a bit of a cheek!

No it doesn't mean that. It means that according to the configuration 
you have specified, lprng and cups must both be installed, but they 
cannot coexist on the same system (i.e. they block).

You, the human, must now make a decision and tell portage what you want 
it to do, and you need to tell it in the unambiguous manner that 
portage expects you to tell it in. You may be quite certain that you 
have done this, but I assure you you have not (according to portage's 
rules that is)

> Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon",
> rather than specifically cups?  For that matter, why must it install
> a print daemon at all?  Not every X user has a printer or wants to
> print.
>
> What can I do about this?  I really don't want to have to install
> cups.

We'll need lots more info to determine why portage wants to do this. 
Start with the output of 'emerge -avt xfce4' and post all of it back 
here.

Meanwhile, I recommend you get out the trusty gentoo docs from 
gentoo.doc and read the section on blockers, as you are going to need 
this info. My bet is that you have the cups USE flag enabled (to enable 
printing) and xfce4 is hard-coded to use cups as the default print 
daemon. Before you ask "why is there not a choice?" - there is, it's 
called a virtual, but in the absense of you saying which package you 
want to satisfy that virtual, there must be a default. cups would be a 
good default choice, lprng would be an very thick choice.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Can't emerge xfce4 with installed lprng. :-(

[Dylan Garrett]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 5:41 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, excellent people!
>
> Having got X11 installed and "working", I need a window manager.  Why
> not XFCE, as supplied on the installation disk?
>
> # emerge xfce didn't work - "Portage: Don't know what xfce is".
> Scrabbled aroud /usr/portage, then # emerge xfce4 started working.
>
> Why the 4 do I have to type xfce4, not xfce?  Anyhow, that's a minor
> point.
>
> The major point was that portage refused to install xfce because it said
> that
>
>    [blocks B     ] net-print/lprng (is blocking net-print/cups-1.3.7-r1)
>    [blocks B     ] net-print/cups (is blocking net-print/lprng-3.8.28)
>
>     * Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
>     * installed at the same time on the same system.
>
> .  I.e., it wants to override my decision to use lprng as print program
> and put in cups instead.  This is a bit of a cheek!
>
> Why isn't xfce configured merely to install "some print daemon", rather
> than specifically cups?  For that matter, why must it install a print
> daemon at all?  Not every X user has a printer or wants to print.
>
> What can I do about this?  I really don't want to have to install cups.
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

Like Sebastian said. Just disable the cups useflag (add -cups to the
USE section of your make.conf) and Xfce should no longer depend on
cups.