[gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mike Diehl]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1515 bytes --]

Ok now, I'm getting fed up with all of the breakage that I've seen in Gentoo 
in the last few months.

I'm trying to upgrade MythTV.  Emerge told me to upgrade my profile, which I 
did.  

Now I'm doing an emerge -u world. 

But before I could do that, I had to upgrade portage, with made sense.

When I go to emerge -u portage, I'm told:

sys-apps/mktemp (is blocking sys-apps/coreutils-7.1)

So I do:
emerge -C mktemp

Now I've gotten a whole page of error messages.  The most basic of error 
messages indicates that the system can't load libselinux.so.1.

I'm not using SElinux!!!!  Nor do I want to.

All I want to do is upgrade a machine that I built a few months ago.  In fact, 
all I want to do is upgrade a SINGLE PACKAGE on that machine!!!

Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for 
normal, every day, usage?

I've got another machine that needs to be upgraded, but hasn't been upgraded 
in some time.  So it's profile is obsolete and many of the core packages have 
been moved around so much that there is no upgrade path from where it is now, 
to where Gentoo is.

Is it time to start looking for a new distribution?  It seems that as long as 
I keep rebuilding machines from a current live CD, all is well.  But if I try 
to upgrade anything else, I end up having to reformat.  I've been using Gentoo 
long enough to have actually met Daniel Robbins in person, but I'm considering 
moving to a different distribution.

Remember, all I want to do is upgrade MythTV.

Mike.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6406 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mike Kazantsev]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 632 bytes --]

On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:

> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for 
> normal, every day, usage?

If you're prepared to update you system at least once a week and
have up-to-date knowledge of all the installed stuff, so you can at
least make a decision whether you need some functionality or not...
Then yep, I'd suggest gentoo.

If you don't care about either then I don't understand why you started
using it in first place - red hat or debian-based distro would've been
much easier and simplier.

-- 
Mike Kazantsev // fraggod.net

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Mike Kazantsev wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
> Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for 
>> normal, every day, usage?
>>     
>
> If you're prepared to update you system at least once a week and
> have up-to-date knowledge of all the installed stuff, so you can at
> least make a decision whether you need some functionality or not...
> Then yep, I'd suggest gentoo.
>
> If you don't care about either then I don't understand why you started
> using it in first place - red hat or debian-based distro would've been
> much easier and simplier.
>
>   

I don't know if this is still the case or not but Mandrake updates
seemed like a reinstall on top of itself to me.  Sort of like when you
reinstall windoze.  It doesn't delete anything, user wise anyway, but
just puts all the new stuff in there. 

You don't get the latest updates with Mandrake like Gentoo does but that
doesn't appear to be to important to you since you don't update very
often anyway.  I suspect some other distro may better suite your needs. 
I been using Gentoo for years and update at least weekly and I rarely
have trouble.  However, if you let the updates pile up, you can have
issues that are difficult to deal with.

Overall, I agree with Mike here.  Update regularly or use some other
distro as he mentioned. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mike Diehl]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3396 bytes --]

On Saturday 21 March 2009 21:00:11 Dale wrote:
> Mike Kazantsev wrote:
> > On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
> >
> > Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:
> >> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for
> >> normal, every day, usage?
> >
> > If you're prepared to update you system at least once a week and
> > have up-to-date knowledge of all the installed stuff, so you can at
> > least make a decision whether you need some functionality or not...
> > Then yep, I'd suggest gentoo.
> >
> > If you don't care about either then I don't understand why you started
> > using it in first place - red hat or debian-based distro would've been
> > much easier and simplier.
>
> I don't know if this is still the case or not but Mandrake updates
> seemed like a reinstall on top of itself to me.  Sort of like when you
> reinstall windoze.  It doesn't delete anything, user wise anyway, but
> just puts all the new stuff in there.
>
> You don't get the latest updates with Mandrake like Gentoo does but that
> doesn't appear to be to important to you since you don't update very
> often anyway.  I suspect some other distro may better suite your needs.
> I been using Gentoo for years and update at least weekly and I rarely
> have trouble.  However, if you let the updates pile up, you can have
> issues that are difficult to deal with.
>
> Overall, I agree with Mike here.  Update regularly or use some other
> distro as he mentioned.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)

Ok, when I started using Gentoo, I remember a discussion about how often to do 
an emege world and the prevailing wisdom at the time was to do it when you 
needed a new feature, or fix.  If the new wisdom is to update, say, weekly, I 
can live with that on the local machines here at the home/office.  I'm a bit 
concerned about the servers I have co-located out of state, though.  On the 
other hand, those are production machines and probably don't need to be 
upgraded many times during their lifetime. 

I've run several other distributions over the years and up until recently I've 
never looked back from Gentoo.

I ran Slackware back when it came on 3.5" floppies.  Of course it had NO 
package manager, so when Redhat hit the scene, I converted.

Redhat, back then was built for a generic 486, so when Mandrake came along 
with pentium optimizations, I converted.

But like you said, upgrading Redhat/Mandrake always seemed a bit windoze'ish 
to me.  You really were simply piling the upgrade on top of the old system, 
like you said earlier.

I used Suse on a project at work and hated every minute of it, and the help 
forums were mostly flamefests.  Never even considered Suse for "real" work.

Like I said, I've been using Gentoo for years now.  When I met Daniel Robbins, 
I'd already been using Gentoo for several months.  Gentoo is still the most 
customizable and optimize-able distribution available.  Sometimes it's down 
right elegant.  http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10106

However, lately, Gentoo seems to have been plagued with problems.  Circular 
blockers.  32/64 bit libraries.  Package re-organization.  Others.

So here is the question:  Are these just growing pains, or is this the trend 
with Gentoo?  If I resolve to update frequently, will these problems become 
more rare?

I'll start a new thread to seek help with my MythTV upgrade problem.

Thanks for listening.

Mike.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 12476 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Mike Diehl wrote:
>
> On Saturday 21 March 2009 21:00:11 Dale wrote:
>
> > Mike Kazantsev wrote:
>
> > > On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
>
> > >
>
> > > Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:
>
> > >> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer
> suitable for
>
> > >> normal, every day, usage?
>
> > >
>
> > > If you're prepared to update you system at least once a week and
>
> > > have up-to-date knowledge of all the installed stuff, so you can at
>
> > > least make a decision whether you need some functionality or not...
>
> > > Then yep, I'd suggest gentoo.
>
> > >
>
> > > If you don't care about either then I don't understand why you started
>
> > > using it in first place - red hat or debian-based distro would've been
>
> > > much easier and simplier.
>
> >
>
> > I don't know if this is still the case or not but Mandrake updates
>
> > seemed like a reinstall on top of itself to me. Sort of like when you
>
> > reinstall windoze. It doesn't delete anything, user wise anyway, but
>
> > just puts all the new stuff in there.
>
> >
>
> > You don't get the latest updates with Mandrake like Gentoo does but that
>
> > doesn't appear to be to important to you since you don't update very
>
> > often anyway. I suspect some other distro may better suite your needs.
>
> > I been using Gentoo for years and update at least weekly and I rarely
>
> > have trouble. However, if you let the updates pile up, you can have
>
> > issues that are difficult to deal with.
>
> >
>
> > Overall, I agree with Mike here. Update regularly or use some other
>
> > distro as he mentioned.
>
> >
>
> > Dale
>
> >
>
> > :-) :-)
>
> Ok, when I started using Gentoo, I remember a discussion about how
> often to do an emege world and the prevailing wisdom at the time was
> to do it when you needed a new feature, or fix. If the new wisdom is
> to update, say, weekly, I can live with that on the local machines
> here at the home/office. I'm a bit concerned about the servers I have
> co-located out of state, though. On the other hand, those are
> production machines and probably don't need to be upgraded many times
> during their lifetime.
>
> I've run several other distributions over the years and up until
> recently I've never looked back from Gentoo.
>
> I ran Slackware back when it came on 3.5" floppies. Of course it had
> NO package manager, so when Redhat hit the scene, I converted.
>
> Redhat, back then was built for a generic 486, so when Mandrake came
> along with pentium optimizations, I converted.
>
> But like you said, upgrading Redhat/Mandrake always seemed a bit
> windoze'ish to me. You really were simply piling the upgrade on top of
> the old system, like you said earlier.
>
> I used Suse on a project at work and hated every minute of it, and the
> help forums were mostly flamefests. Never even considered Suse for
> "real" work.
>
> Like I said, I've been using Gentoo for years now. When I met Daniel
> Robbins, I'd already been using Gentoo for several months. Gentoo is
> still the most customizable and optimize-able distribution available.
> Sometimes it's down right elegant.
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10106
>
> However, lately, Gentoo seems to have been plagued with problems.
> Circular blockers. 32/64 bit libraries. Package re-organization. Others.
>
> So here is the question: Are these just growing pains, or is this the
> trend with Gentoo? If I resolve to update frequently, will these
> problems become more rare?
>
> I'll start a new thread to seek help with my MythTV upgrade problem.
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> Mike.
>

This is my opinion and I am not a dev by any means.  I think Gentoo is
having some growing pains.  I also think it is making huge leaps right
now and they are really making some serious improvements.  The newer
portage will handle most blocks without you doing anything.  There may
be some exceptions to that but I would say the vast majority of blocks
will be dealt with automagically.  They seam to have came up with a way
for portage to handle those blocks that is pretty seamless.  That said,
reading the elog or the messages after a emerge could be more critical. 
I read where someone may have missed a message and rebooted only to find
that something was screwy and would no longer boot.  I'm not sure they
were running stable but either way these things can crop up.  From what
they posted, they had to boot with the CD and fix it.  I sort of like
that part about Gentoo.  So, while portage may handle a lot for you, you
need to run etc-update or whatever you use to update configs after each
update or before you reboot at least. 

I run a single desktop machine here that runs folding and is my surfing
machine.  I could probably go a couple weeks between updates perhaps
even a month and be OK.  I think one to two weeks just seems to be a
sweet spot for me at least.  Long enough that you are not constantly
updating but often enough that you are up to date.  That would be
especially true with regards to Mandrake, or whatever it is called now,
and some others that take a while to update.  They may be doing more
testing or something but takes longer still. 

A lot of this is based on what you are doing and the time you have to
spend on it.  Some people from what I have read manage lots of servers
and I assume they are running Gentoo on them.  Some things may take
longer to upgrade so you may want to wait a little longer.  There could
also be a bug that you need fixed before you upgrade.  Gentoo usually
has a easy option for this while some other distros may not.  You can
always unmask a package if it is a bug fix and is known to work.  Some
other distros may not have it available for a while until some internal
testing is done.

If it were me, I would try updating every couple weeks for a bit and see
how that works.  You may still run into a issue on occasion but as long
as there are a lot of others running into the same thing, then it is not
your upgrade timing but just a serious change upstream.  If you rarely
run into trouble then maybe you can go longer between upgrades or if you
still have issues then do them a little more often.  I would suspect
that you would find that sweet spot somewhere close to a couple weeks to
as much as a month.  I do think this will make things a lot easier. 
Keep in mind, the devs upgrade their rigs a LOT.  I doubt they ever have
to update a machine that has not been updated for several months so it
would be very difficult for them to test updating from say a 2006
profile.  I doubt they even have a machine running that outdated.  Well,
x86 anyway.  There may be some running some old hardware that out of date. 

A little long winded but I hope that helps and I'm sure some other gurus
will chime in as well.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 22 March 2009 07:50:04 Mike Diehl wrote:
> So here is the question:  Are these just growing pains, or is this the
> trend with Gentoo?  If I resolve to update frequently, will these problems
> become more rare?

I've been using Gentoo for 4 years now, my main desktop is still running code 
that I compiled on the first install in 2005. And I'm on my third Gentoo 
notebook in a row. Absurb update issues simply don't happen, as long as you 
follow the rules:

Update weekly on <~arch>
Update monthly on <arch>
Adjust to suit your needs.

You ran into the mktemp issue, which feels about a year old from this corner, 
so Iguess you have not been updating regularly. I'm not sure where you got the 
advice to update only when you need a new feature or a fix, but it is not 
workable in practice.

Gentoo does have issues, but the majority of them are with changes to 
packages, not changes to Gentoo. Remember that with Gentoo you are rebuilding 
a live system on the actual system itself. We don't have build farms that 
rebuild the entire distro and push out new rpms nightly - so the problems that 
can hit Gentoo don't happen to binary distro users.

Take expat. It got an upgrade a long time ago which coudl break Gnome entirely 
if you didn't do it right. There was nothing the devs could do really, because 
that's how those packages were written. The normal case is to have a bare 
machine, build expat, then build Gnome. On Gentoo, you want to do all of this 
while using the Gnome that needs to be rebuilt. If you update regularly, 
you'll find lots of people around who know what the steps are and can help. 
Today, most of us have forgotten and need to turn to Google to find the 
howtos.

If you find this happens more and more often with gentoo, it is probably a  
symptom of more and more useful packages out there, that are being developed 
faster with more features. See it as a sign of success on the part of FLOSS 
rather than a failing of Gentoo.

And I would advise AGAINST gentoo on your out-of-state servers. They need too 
much pampering to keep them stable. I have about 100 machines at work, a 
mixture of 30% FreeBSD, SuSE <ugh>, some Centos and even a single lone Solaris 
machine. The worst of the lot has to be the SVN server, running Gentoo. No-one 
will touch it anymore, and the last time I did, I broke it horribly with a 
conflict between portage and cpan Perl modules.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1537 bytes --]

On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:50:04 -0600, Mike Diehl wrote:

> However, lately, Gentoo seems to have been plagued with problems.
> Circular blockers.  32/64 bit libraries.  Package re-organization.
> Others.

That's inevitable with a versionless distro like Gentoo. With the other
distros you have mentions, when the relationship between two packages
changes, you don't notice because you only make the switch with what is
effectively a re-install. With Gentoo,it is possible to try to upgrade
one of the packages without the other, hence the need for blockers.

> So here is the question:  Are these just growing pains, or is this the
> trend with Gentoo?  If I resolve to update frequently, will these
> problems become more rare?

It is a reducing trend, as portage gets better at resolving things
automatically. The current method of resolving blockers has greatly
reduced the time spent on them compared with a year ago. Frequent updates
are a definite advantage, because when such issues do occur, they happen
one at a time, making resolution much easier (like the mktemp
which only needed a quick emerge -C then carry on). When you save
up several months' worth of minor issues and let them all hit at once, it
becomes more of a hassle to sort out.

You should also run emerge --sync followed by glsa-check at least once a
week to make sure you don't miss out on important security fixes. Another
reason to keep up to date.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Bother," said Pooh, as he drained the vodka bottle dry.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[KH]

Hi,
you also have the chance of running emerge -DuavN system. That way you
can be sure that your system is stable without updating every program
you might only need once in a blue moon or you are allready seticfied with.
I would allways have an eye on the GLSA. You can do this in the forum,
with rss or use something like glsa-check -t all

kh

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Philip Webb]

090321 Mike Diehl wrote:
> Ok now, I'm getting fed up with all of the breakage
> that I've seen in Gentoo in the last few months.

I haven't experienced any such thing.

> I'm trying to upgrade MythTV.

I don't use that, so can't help directly.

> Emerge told me to upgrade my profile, which I did.  

I have (for a 64-bit system with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor) :

  make.profile -> ..//usr/portage/profiles/default/linux/amd64/2008.0

> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.

I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.
I also have a list of all the pkgs I have installed with dates + deps,
which I keep upto-date by hand as I emerge items.
I've never understood why 'emerge world' is considered standard:
repeatedly, there are appeals for help here resulting from its shortcomings
(was it copied from Free BSD when Gentoo was originally created ? ).

> But before I could do that, I had to upgrade portage, with made sense.
> When I go to emerge -u portage, I'm told:
> sys-apps/mktemp (is blocking sys-apps/coreutils-7.1)

My hand-made list of pkgs tells me that I removed Mktemp 080419
& that it had been required for Debianutils,
of which my current version is 2.28.5 installed 090314 .
Others had problems with this block, perhaps 1 year ago,
so if you really are that far behind in updating,
you should search the list archive to see what the advice was back then:
IIRC a new version of Debianutils incorporated the Mktemp stuff,
so they became incompatible.

> So I do 'emerge -C mktemp' & got a whole page of error messages.
> The most basic msgs indicates the system can't load libselinux.so.1.

Do you have an item in 'make.conf' which requires that somewhere ?
Have you run Revdep-rebuild (pretend), to see what needs updating ?
'slocate' finds no similar file on my system.

> All I want to do is upgrade a machine that I built a few months ago.

"A few months" can be a long time in the Gentoo world (smile).
For a desktop machine, you should do a full update >= once/month :
I do it as a matter of routine every Saturday ('eix-sync' + follow-up).

As others have advised, Gentoo is not for people
who want to install & forget: for that, try Mandriva, a respectable distro.

Anyway, I've offered a few hints above: try them & ask again here.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 941 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:57 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:

> > Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.  
> 
> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
> then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.

I hope you use --oneshot every time or your world file will be a complete
mess by now :(

> I also have a list of all the pkgs I have installed with dates + deps,
> which I keep upto-date by hand as I emerge items.
> I've never understood why 'emerge world' is considered standard:
> repeatedly, there are appeals for help here resulting from its
> shortcomings

One or two problems a week against the thousands of people running it each
day does not indicate a problem. I'd say that avoiding blockers etc by
selectively skipping upgrades is more likely to lead to problems later.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Windows 98, the most installed system in the world, I know, I've done it
5 or 6 times myself.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Philip Webb]

090322 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:57 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
>>> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.  
>> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
>> then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.
> I hope you use --oneshot every time
> or your world file will be a complete mess by now :(

Yes, there's always someone who says that (grin).
Of course, it's 2nd nature to check for 'W' or 'S' in my list
& if the pkg has neither, make sure to 'emerge -1 <pkgname>'.
Anyway, isn't 'world' going to vanish with the new '@' sets ?

>> I also have a list of all the pkgs I have installed with dates + deps,
>> which I keep upto-date by hand as I emerge items.
>> I've never understood why 'emerge world' is considered standard:
>> repeatedly, there are appeals for help resulting from its shortcomings.
> One or two problems a week against the thousands of people running it
> each day does not indicate a problem.  I'd say that avoiding blockers etc
> by selectively skipping upgrades is more likely to lead to problems later.

No, people run 'emerge world' in the background, miss the messages
& then run into nasty trouble for omitting RR or 'etc-update'.
That's the spirit of Ubuntu & the rest, not the hands-on Gentoo approach.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1202 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:37:50 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:

> 090322 Neil Bothwick wrote:

> > I hope you use --oneshot every time
> > or your world file will be a complete mess by now :(
> 
> Yes, there's always someone who says that (grin).

I wouldn't want to disappoint you :)

> Of course, it's 2nd nature to check for 'W' or 'S' in my list
> & if the pkg has neither, make sure to 'emerge -1 <pkgname>'.

I just use -1 whenever I re-emerge anything, whether it's in world or not.

> Anyway, isn't 'world' going to vanish with the new '@' sets ?

No.

> > One or two problems a week against the thousands of people running it
> > each day does not indicate a problem.  I'd say that avoiding blockers
> > etc by selectively skipping upgrades is more likely to lead to
> > problems later.

> No, people run 'emerge world' in the background, miss the messages
> & then run into nasty trouble for omitting RR or 'etc-update'.

Don't blame hammers because people try to use them to drive screws.

Letting idiots break their systems is a refreshing sign of Gentoo's lack
of idiot-proofing :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

All mail what i send is thoughly proof-red, definately!

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

RE: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[James Homuth]

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Webb [mailto:purslow@ca.inter.net] 
Sent: March 22, 2009 7:38 AM
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

090322 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:57 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
>>> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.  
>> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world', then decide which 
>> packages to update & emerge them individually.
> I hope you use --oneshot every time
> or your world file will be a complete mess by now :(

Yes, there's always someone who says that (grin).
Of course, it's 2nd nature to check for 'W' or 'S' in my list & if the pkg
has neither, make sure to 'emerge -1 <pkgname>'.
Anyway, isn't 'world' going to vanish with the new '@' sets ?

>> I also have a list of all the pkgs I have installed with dates + 
>> deps, which I keep upto-date by hand as I emerge items.
>> I've never understood why 'emerge world' is considered standard:
>> repeatedly, there are appeals for help resulting from its shortcomings.
> One or two problems a week against the thousands of people running it 
> each day does not indicate a problem.  I'd say that avoiding blockers 
> etc by selectively skipping upgrades is more likely to lead to problems
later.

No, people run 'emerge world' in the background, miss the messages & then
run into nasty trouble for omitting RR or 'etc-update'.
That's the spirit of Ubuntu & the rest, not the hands-on Gentoo approach.

I run emerge world in the background and still run etc-update when I'm told
to. Crontab emails plus portage's --quiet flag are awesome. Speaking of
that, going to run that now.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Philip Webb wrote:
> 090322 Neil Bothwick wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:57 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
>>     
>>>> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.  
>>>>         
>>> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
>>> then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.
>>>       
>> I hope you use --oneshot every time
>> or your world file will be a complete mess by now :(
>>     
>
> Yes, there's always someone who says that (grin).
> Of course, it's 2nd nature to check for 'W' or 'S' in my list
> & if the pkg has neither, make sure to 'emerge -1 <pkgname>'.
> Anyway, isn't 'world' going to vanish with the new '@' sets ?
>   

Nope, they are still there and the sets are working too. 


Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Philip Webb wrote:
> 090322 Neil Bothwick wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:57 -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
>>     
>>>> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.  
>>>>         
>>> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
>>> then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.
>>>       
>> I hope you use --oneshot every time
>> or your world file will be a complete mess by now :(
>>     
>
> Yes, there's always someone who says that (grin).
> Of course, it's 2nd nature to check for 'W' or 'S' in my list
> & if the pkg has neither, make sure to 'emerge -1 <pkgname>'.
> Anyway, isn't 'world' going to vanish with the new '@' sets ?
>   

Nope, they are still there and the sets are working too. 


Dale

:-)  :-) 

emerge-log (was: Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?)

[Daniel Pielmeier]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1537 bytes --]

Philip Webb schrieb am 22.03.2009 07:58:

> I never do that: I always do 'emerge -Dup world',
> then decide which packages to update & emerge them individually.
> I also have a list of all the pkgs I have installed with dates + deps,
> which I keep upto-date by hand as I emerge items.
> I've never understood why 'emerge world' is considered standard:
> repeatedly, there are appeals for help here resulting from its shortcomings
> (was it copied from Free BSD when Gentoo was originally created ? ).
> 
>> But before I could do that, I had to upgrade portage, with made sense.
>> When I go to emerge -u portage, I'm told:
>> sys-apps/mktemp (is blocking sys-apps/coreutils-7.1)
> 
> My hand-made list of pkgs tells me that I removed Mktemp 080419
> & that it had been required for Debianutils,
> of which my current version is 2.28.5 installed 090314 .
> Others had problems with this block, perhaps 1 year ago,
> so if you really are that far behind in updating,
> you should search the list archive to see what the advice was back then:
> IIRC a new version of Debianutils incorporated the Mktemp stuff,
> so they became incompatible.
> 

You know that such a list already exists. It is /var/log/emerge.log. To
get useful information out of it app-portage/genlop comes handy.

genlop -u mktemp
 * sys-apps/mktemp

     Sat Mar  3 18:14:30 2007 >>> sys-apps/mktemp-1.5
     Tue Dec 18 01:37:31 2007 >>> sys-apps/mktemp-1.5
     Sat Apr 12 23:15:42 2008 <<< sys-apps/mktemp-1.5

Regards,

Daniel


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 260 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] Re: Time to move on?

[Francesco Talamona]

On Sunday 22 March 2009, Mike Diehl wrote:
> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.
>
> But before I could do that, I had to upgrade portage, with made
> sense.
>
> When I go to emerge -u portage, I'm told:
>
> sys-apps/mktemp (is blocking sys-apps/coreutils-7.1)
>
> So I do:
> emerge -C mktemp
>
> Now I've gotten a whole page of error messages.  The most basic of
> error messages indicates that the system can't load libselinux.so.1.
>
> I'm not using SElinux!!!!  Nor do I want to.

I've read the other threads; are you still interested in finding the 
solution to this showstopper ? 

My guess is that the system was already unstable, maybe awaiting for a 
revdep-rebuild. Are you completely blocked or it's possible to fix at 
last the basic elements?

Ciao
	Francesco

-- 
Linux Version 2.6.28-gentoo-r3, Compiled #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Mar 8 
12:38:59 CET 2009
Two 1GHz AMD Athlon 64 Processors, 4GB RAM, 4018.04 Bogomips Total
aemaeth

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Peter Alfredsen]

On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:17:53 -0600
Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:

> It seems that as
> long as I keep rebuilding machines from a current live CD, all is
> well.  But if I try to upgrade anything else, I end up having to
> reformat.  I've been using Gentoo long enough to have actually met
> Daniel Robbins in person, but I'm considering moving to a different
> distribution.

I would say that if you do a complete world update at least every six
months, followed by revdep-rebuild, keeping Gentoo up-to-date should be
relatively painless, excluding all the blockers you have to resolve.
ie.:
emerge -uDNav world
revdep-rebuild -i -- -a

The libselinux problems you ran into are known, but that's also the
reason why libselinux is masked on all recent profiles.

/loki_val

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Albert Hopkins]

On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 12:44 +0100, Peter Alfredsen wrote:
> I would say that if you do a complete world update at least every six
> months, followed by revdep-rebuild, keeping Gentoo up-to-date should
> be
> relatively painless, excluding all the blockers you have to resolve.
> ie.:
> emerge -uDNav world
> revdep-rebuild -i -- -a

I've done this on a machine I hadn't touched in over 6 months.  And,
surprisingly, I was relieved that it came out fine. Though I did have
the advantage of:

      * Having another machine that I upgrade regularly and so know what
        to look out for
      * I read and react to, if necessary, the elog messages from the
        ebuild chatter (I have them sent to my mailbox)
      * Checking the bug database if I run into a snag
      * General experience on how to maintain a (Gentoo) system

That and, if a particular version does not work out for you, you often
can downgrade to an older version.  Or if you don't like the way
something is built, even with the available USE flags, you can usually
keep a simple patch and keep your own version in a private overlay.  I
love this stuff.  This is why I use Gentoo.

Contrast with another distro I use.  I recently upgraded to version n+1
and am encountering all kinds of problems.  I have versions of software
installed that don't work or don't work the way they used to, but I
can't go back.  I can't install the older versions of packages because
they depend on older versions of libs that no longer exist on version n
+1 (and there are no such thing as SLOTs and revdep-rebuild). And even
if I thought about downgrading the entire distro to version n that
pretty much means a re-install of the entire OS (and then a re-update of
the downgraded OS).   I've submitted two bugs for version n+1 but one
that I submitted in January hasn't even been responded to and the other
was quickly closed as a WONTFIX.

Not to criticize other distros (which is one reason why I didn't even
name it), but my point is that they all have their pluses and minuses.
For me at least, Gentoo comes with fewer minuses and when they do come
they are usually easier to fix/get fixed.  The caveat is that you
actually have to know/care what you're doing.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dirk Heinrichs]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1856 bytes --]

Am Sonntag, 22. März 2009 02:17:53 schrieb Mike Diehl:

> Ok now, I'm getting fed up with all of the breakage that I've seen in
> Gentoo in the last few months.
>
> I'm trying to upgrade MythTV.  Emerge told me to upgrade my profile, which
> I did.
>
> Now I'm doing an emerge -u world.
>
> But before I could do that, I had to upgrade portage, with made sense.
>
> When I go to emerge -u portage, I'm told:
>
> sys-apps/mktemp (is blocking sys-apps/coreutils-7.1)
>
> So I do:
> emerge -C mktemp

Depending on which package you unmerge before the blocker is resolved, this 
can break your system. This is while paludis and newer versions of portage can 
be told to resolve blockers automatically.

> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for
> normal, every day, usage?

Not if you keep it up to date. Then, even a ~arch system is relatively 
painless to use.

> I've got another machine that needs to be upgraded, but hasn't been
> upgraded in some time.  So it's profile is obsolete and many of the core
> packages have been moved around so much that there is no upgrade path from
> where it is now, to where Gentoo is.

There always is. However, the longer the path, the more pitfalls may be on it.

> Is it time to start looking for a new distribution?  It seems that as long
> as I keep rebuilding machines from a current live CD, all is well.

??? I don't understand.

> But if
> I try to upgrade anything else, I end up having to reformat.

That also doesn't make sense.

> I've been
> using Gentoo long enough to have actually met Daniel Robbins in person, but
> I'm considering moving to a different distribution.

dito.

> Remember, all I want to do is upgrade MythTV.

So, then just do it. People here will help you to resolve the issues.

Bye...

	Dirk

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 190 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Damian]

This is just a testimony.

I remember I had similar problems (but probably they were my fault),
so I tried to replace gentoo using distros such as Suse or Ubuntu, but
when I wanted to customize some things it was terribly difficult. So I
returned to my previous love. The only difference is that this time
I'm using paludis as a package manager. No problems so far.

Best regards,
Damian.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Mike Diehl <mdiehl@diehlnet.com> wrote:
> Ok now, I'm getting fed up with all of the breakage that I've seen in Gentoo
> in the last few months.
>

Understood and personally felt.

<SNIP>
>
> emerge -C mktemp
>

Generally a *very* bad move unless you are *absolutely* sure that what
you are removing is not needed to keep the system working.

<SNIP>
>
> Has Gentoo become such a moving target that it's no longer suitable for
> normal, every day, usage?

OK, I'm a putz who has used Gentoo now for (I think) 8-9 years. I'm
not a developer, a programmer or a sys admin. Keep that in mind.

Gentoo goes through phases of relative stability interrupted by
periods of time where major problems dominate. (As seen by users, not
the Lords of Gentoo (LoG)) Personally I think we're in one of those
unfortunate periods of time where there is a relatively high number of
issues. I'm seeing it on all my machines. It's taking far more of my
time to deal with this than I wish it would.

1) ntp-update problems at boot time.
2) emerge -DuN world building lots of packages that are already on the
system but the LoG has apparently changed flags so emerge wants to
rebuild them.
3) New and unclear (to me) messages about portage flag overrides
caused by overlays I've been using for a while.

Am I frustrated like you? Yep. Very much so. Am I considering using
something else? Quite a few thoughts. Do I think there's a better
distro? Not that I know of.

My workload:

1) Gentoo 64-bit desktop
2) Gentoo 32-bit desktop
3) Gentoo 32-bit mythbackend
4) Gentoo 32-bit mythfrontend
5) Gentoo 32-bit mythfrontend

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 357 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:23:38 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:

> 2) emerge -DuN world building lots of packages that are already on the
> system but the LoG has apparently changed flags so emerge wants to
> rebuild them.

Don't use --newuse, use --reinstall changed-use.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Most software is about as user-friendly as a cornered rat!

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:23:38 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>> 2) emerge -DuN world building lots of packages that are already on the
>> system but the LoG has apparently changed flags so emerge wants to
>> rebuild them.
>
> Don't use --newuse, use --reinstall changed-use.
>
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick

Neil,
   As always, thanks.

   So, is this option new in the last few years or something? I
haven't seen it before.

   Also, it seems that there's no shortcut for that command so instead of

emerge -pvDuN @world

if I understand then I might try

emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world

??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)

Thanks. I'll check it out on the next round up updates.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 418 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:02:12 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:

>    Also, it seems that there's no shortcut for that command so instead
> of
> 
> emerge -pvDuN @world
> 
> if I understand then I might try
> 
> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
> 
> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)

Use an alias and it's less typing.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Fine day for a good workout. Steal something heavy.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:02:12 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>
>   
>>    Also, it seems that there's no shortcut for that command so instead
>> of
>>
>> emerge -pvDuN @world
>>
>> if I understand then I might try
>>
>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
>>
>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
>>     
>
> Use an alias and it's less typing.
>
>
>   

Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 504 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:

> >> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
> >>
> >> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)

> > Use an alias and it's less typing.

> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.

It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that I
call often, but not every time.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Windows Error #09: Game Over. Exiting Windows.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>   
>>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
>>>>
>>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
>>>>         
>
>   
>>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
>>>       
>
>   
>> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
>>     
>
> It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
> option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that I
> call often, but not every time.
>
>
>   

I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Albert Hopkins]

On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 22:18 -0500, Dale wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
> >
> >   
> >>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
> >>>>
> >>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
> >>>>         
> >
> >   
> >>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
> >>>       
> >
> >   
> >> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
> >>     
> >
> > It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
> > option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that I
> > call often, but not every time.
> >
> >
> >   
> 
> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 

Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Albert Hopkins wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 22:18 -0500, Dale wrote:
>   
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>     
>>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
>>>>>>         
>>>>>>             
>>>   
>>>       
>>>>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
>>>>>       
>>>>>           
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
>>> option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that I
>>> call often, but not every time.
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
>> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 
>>     
>
> Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.
>
>
>   

Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
option, how do you tell it not to use it?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Hilco Wijbenga]

2009/3/23 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>:
> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
> option, how do you tell it not to use it?

alias ls='/bin/ls --color'
alias l='ls -l'

With these aliases in your .bashrc (or whatever is appropriate in your
environment), you can now use 'ls' and 'l'. Of course, you already had
'ls' (namely /bin/ls).

If you simply type 'ls' then you are using the alias and you get
colour output. If you don't want colour output you use '/bin/ls' (the
actual binary). Typing 'l' basically runs '/bin/ls --color -l'. If you
don't want that then you don't use 'l'.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Hilco Wijbenga wrote:
> 2009/3/23 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>:
>   
>> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
>> option, how do you tell it not to use it?
>>     
>
> alias ls='/bin/ls --color'
> alias l='ls -l'
>
> With these aliases in your .bashrc (or whatever is appropriate in your
> environment), you can now use 'ls' and 'l'. Of course, you already had
> 'ls' (namely /bin/ls).
>
> If you simply type 'ls' then you are using the alias and you get
> colour output. If you don't want colour output you use '/bin/ls' (the
> actual binary). Typing 'l' basically runs '/bin/ls --color -l'. If you
> don't want that then you don't use 'l'.
>
>
>   


Oh, Cool..  I see now.  So basically you sort of change the command as
well.  Now that command that someone else posted makes sense too.

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Albert Hopkins]

On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 18:58 -0500, Dale wrote:
> Albert Hopkins wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 22:18 -0500, Dale wrote:
> >   
> >> Neil Bothwick wrote:
> >>     
> >>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
> >>>>>>         
> >>>>>>             
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
> >>>>>       
> >>>>>           
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >>>> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
> >>>>     
> >>>>         
> >>> It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
> >>> option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that I
> >>> call often, but not every time.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>   
> >>>       
> >> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
> >> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 
> >>     
> >
> > Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.
> >
> >
> >   
> 
> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
> option, how do you tell it not to use it?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something... 

It's not an "option". It's an alias.  If you have

    $ alias myalias="emerge --foo --bar --baz"

Then to use the alias you simply type

    $ myalias

If you don't want to use the alias, well, don't type it. I.e.

    $ emerge --la --di --dah

or

    $ someotheralias

Or perhaps you don't aren't understanding what shell aliases are?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(command)

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[James Skinner]

Man. Is this thread really going to continue??

On 3/23/09, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 18:58 -0500, Dale wrote:
>> Albert Hopkins wrote:
>> > On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 22:18 -0500, Dale wrote:
>> >
>> >> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>> It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted that
>> >>> option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with options that
>> >>> I
>> >>> call often, but not every time.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
>> >> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run?
>> >>
>> >
>> > Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
>> option, how do you tell it not to use it?
>
> Unless I'm misunderstanding something...
>
> It's not an "option". It's an alias.  If you have
>
>     $ alias myalias="emerge --foo --bar --baz"
>
> Then to use the alias you simply type
>
>     $ myalias
>
> If you don't want to use the alias, well, don't type it. I.e.
>
>     $ emerge --la --di --dah
>
> or
>
>     $ someotheralias
>
> Or perhaps you don't aren't understanding what shell aliases are?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(command)
>
>
>
>

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

James Skinner
james.skinner@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

James Skinner wrote:
> Man. Is this thread really going to continue??
>
>   

If you are not careful, you will get someone on the no top posting
soapbox.  LOL  This is a educational channel and there are teachers and
learners.  I'm the learner.  We can however change the subject line if
you wish?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  This has a lot of humor in it.  Please laugh a LOT !!

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Daniel Pielmeier]

2009/3/24 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>:
> James Skinner wrote:
>> Man. Is this thread really going to continue??
>>
>>
>
> If you are not careful, you will get someone on the no top posting
> soapbox.  LOL  This is a educational channel and there are teachers and
> learners.  I'm the learner.  We can however change the subject line if
> you wish?
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
> P. S.  This has a lot of humor in it.  Please laugh a LOT !!
>
>

Dale++

-- 
Regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on? -> top posting

[KH]

Dale schrieb:
> James Skinner wrote:
>   
>> Man. Is this thread really going to continue??
>>
>>   
>>     
>
> If you are not careful, you will get someone on the no top posting
> soapbox.  LOL  This is a educational channel and there are teachers and
> learners.  I'm the learner.  We can however change the subject line if
> you wish?
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>
> P. S.  This has a lot of humor in it.  Please laugh a LOT !!
>
>   
I was just searching for this top posting message ... lol

And I also learnd a lot reading this post.

kh

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 375 bytes --]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:46:15 -0400, James Skinner wrote:

> Man. Is this thread really going to continue??

As long as people have something to say, yes. Now it can be forked into a
no-top-posting discussion too, so you have helped prolong it that much
longer :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. *
Wright

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Stroller]

On 24 Mar 2009, at 02:34, Albert Hopkins wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 18:58 -0500, Dale wrote:
>> Albert Hopkins wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 22:18 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:26:40 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> emerge -pvDu --reinstall changed-use @world
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ??? Certainly a lot more typing. ;-)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Use an alias and it's less typing.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Or add it to make.conf.  I think that would work too.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> It would work, every time you called emerge, whether you wanted  
>>>>> that
>>>>> option or not.I prefer to have  aliases for commands with  
>>>>> options that I
>>>>> call often, but not every time.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you  
>>>> use the
>>>> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
>> option, how do you tell it not to use it?
>
> Unless I'm misunderstanding something...
>
> It's not an "option". It's an alias.  If you have
>
>    $ alias myalias="emerge --foo --bar --baz"
>
> Then to use the alias you simply type
>
>    $ myalias
>
> If you don't want to use the alias, well, don't type it. I.e.
>
>    $ emerge --la --di --dah
>
> or
>
>    $ someotheralias
>
> Or perhaps you don't aren't understanding what shell aliases are?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alias_(command)
>

Every time you bottom post with more than a page or screenful of  
quoting, a top-posting is justified.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 347 bytes --]

On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:40:51 +0000, Stroller wrote:

> Every time you bottom post with more than a page or screenful of  
> quoting, a top-posting is justified.

No it's not, but trimming of the quoted text is.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary
notation and those who don't.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:40:51 +0000, Stroller wrote:
>
>   
>> Every time you bottom post with more than a page or screenful of  
>> quoting, a top-posting is justified.
>>     
>
> No it's not, but trimming of the quoted text is.
>
>   

+1 

I don't mind top posting in private emails but not on the list.  Who is
it with that signature with the backward questions about top posting?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 644 bytes --]

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:49:57 -0500, Dale wrote:

> I don't mind top posting in private emails but not on the list.  Who is
> it with that signature with the backward questions about top posting?

This one?

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

or this one?

Q:  Why is top-posting evil?
A: backwards read don't humans because

Both have been in my tagfile for years.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The best things in life are free, but the
expensive ones are still worth a look.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:49:57 -0500, Dale wrote:
>
>   
>> I don't mind top posting in private emails but not on the list.  Who is
>> it with that signature with the backward questions about top posting?
>>     
>
> This one?
>
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
>
> or this one?
>
> Q:  Why is top-posting evil?
> A: backwards read don't humans because
>
> Both have been in my tagfile for years.
>
>
>   

The top one is the one I was thinking about.  Funny thing is, it took me
a couple reads the first time to figure out it was backwards.  It really
didn't make much sense.

I do like the last one tho.  That was cute.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[James Skinner]

Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.



On 3/25/09, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:49:57 -0500, Dale wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I don't mind top posting in private emails but not on the list.  Who is
>>> it with that signature with the backward questions about top posting?
>>>
>>
>> This one?
>>
>> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> A: Top-posting.
>> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
>>
>> or this one?
>>
>> Q:  Why is top-posting evil?
>> A: backwards read don't humans because
>>
>> Both have been in my tagfile for years.
>>
>>
>>
>
> The top one is the one I was thinking about.  Funny thing is, it took me
> a couple reads the first time to figure out it was backwards.  It really
> didn't make much sense.
>
> I do like the last one tho.  That was cute.  ;-)
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

James Skinner
james.skinner@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 414 bytes --]

On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:27:09 -0400, James Skinner wrote:

> Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
> does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.

It doesn't mater what device is used to send the email, it is the
recipient that is affected by the readability of the mail.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If it doesn't fit, you're not using a big enough hammer.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Saphirus Sage]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:27:09 -0400, James Skinner wrote:
>
>   
>> Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
>> does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.
>>     
>
> It doesn't mater what device is used to send the email, it is the
> recipient that is affected by the readability of the mail.
>
>   
Pretty awesome topic transition.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Momesso Andrea]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 608 bytes --]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:14:14PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:27:09 -0400, James Skinner wrote:
> 
> > Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
> > does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.
> 
> It doesn't mater what device is used to send the email, it is the
> recipient that is affected by the readability of the mail.
> 
Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
device.

---
TopperH
http://topperh.blogspot.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 16:54:21 Momesso Andrea wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:14:14PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:27:09 -0400, James Skinner wrote:
> > > Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
> > > does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.
> >
> > It doesn't mater what device is used to send the email, it is the
> > recipient that is affected by the readability of the mail.
>
> Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
> forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
> device.

What? There's no down arrow on a BlackBerry?

I don't have one of those devices, and fully intend to never have one, so if 
there's a stupid implementation of the reply function, I'd never know it. But 
just asking, that's all.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 March 2009 16:54:21 Momesso Andrea wrote:
>> Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
>> forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
>> device.
>
> What? There's no down arrow on a BlackBerry?
>
> I don't have one of those devices, and fully intend to never have one, so if
> there's a stupid implementation of the reply function, I'd never know it. But
> just asking, that's all.

There are many devices and webmail services that do quoting in the
"Microsoft Outlook" style -- putting a one-line divider between the
reply and the original message. No indentation or nesting of replies.
This makes it harder to reply to specific parts of e-mails, but does
show you the entire conversation unaltered (when everyone uses
Outlook, anyway) -- and some companies actually /require/ that style
of quoting, believe it or not.

Replying to specific parts of an e-mail in Outlook (etc) is usually a
joke. People resort to strange combinations of colorizing, changing
fonts, emboldening, italicizing, etc. All of it is hideous and was
solved 30 years ago by simple indentation and nesting of quotes...
Thanks a lot, Microsoft.

I use gmail for this and other mailing lists; it collapses quoted text
and shows e-mails in a conversational view. It really does a good job
of it and the top-posting and quoting-of-entire-emails really becomes
a non-issue. It's the next best thing to having everyone quote
properly.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wednesday 25 March 2009 16:54:21 Momesso Andrea wrote:
>>> Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
>>> forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
>>> device.
>>
>> What? There's no down arrow on a BlackBerry?
>>
>> I don't have one of those devices, and fully intend to never have one, so if
>> there's a stupid implementation of the reply function, I'd never know it. But
>> just asking, that's all.
>
> There are many devices and webmail services that do quoting in the
> "Microsoft Outlook" style -- putting a one-line divider between the
> reply and the original message. No indentation or nesting of replies.
> This makes it harder to reply to specific parts of e-mails, but does
> show you the entire conversation unaltered (when everyone uses
> Outlook, anyway) -- and some companies actually /require/ that style
> of quoting, believe it or not.

I will add that e-mail clients that are geared toward HTML e-mail tend
to go the top-posting route, too, because doing the traditional
quoting of HTML e-mails is nearly impossible.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 17:16:51 Paul Hartman wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> 
wrote:
> > On Wednesday 25 March 2009 16:54:21 Momesso Andrea wrote:
> >> Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
> >> forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
> >> device.
> >
> > What? There's no down arrow on a BlackBerry?
> >
> > I don't have one of those devices, and fully intend to never have one, so
> > if there's a stupid implementation of the reply function, I'd never know
> > it. But just asking, that's all.
>
> There are many devices and webmail services that do quoting in the
> "Microsoft Outlook" style -- putting a one-line divider between the
> reply and the original message. No indentation or nesting of replies.
> This makes it harder to reply to specific parts of e-mails, but does
> show you the entire conversation unaltered (when everyone uses
> Outlook, anyway)

haha, fat chance of that on a Gentoo list :-)

> -- and some companies actually /require/ that style
> of quoting, believe it or not.

<sigh> I know. I work for one. email style is driven by the sales people.

But us techies ignore the rules and do it our way anyway - we admin the mail 
relays

> Replying to specific parts of an e-mail in Outlook (etc) is usually a
> joke. People resort to strange combinations of colorizing, changing
> fonts, emboldening, italicizing, etc. All of it is hideous and was
> solved 30 years ago by simple indentation and nesting of quotes...
> Thanks a lot, Microsoft.
>
> I use gmail for this and other mailing lists; it collapses quoted text
> and shows e-mails in a conversational view. It really does a good job
> of it and the top-posting and quoting-of-entire-emails really becomes
> a non-issue. It's the next best thing to having everyone quote
> properly.

Yes, gmail is quite good at it in a browser. It's ben ages since I did that 
though - I pop my mail and just use the web end to scan the spam folder once a 
month


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Graham Murray]

Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> writes:

> There are many devices and webmail services that do quoting in the
> "Microsoft Outlook" style -- putting a one-line divider between the
> reply and the original message. No indentation or nesting of replies.
> This makes it harder to reply to specific parts of e-mails, but does
> show you the entire conversation unaltered (when everyone uses
> Outlook, anyway) -- and some companies actually /require/ that style
> of quoting, believe it or not.

Maybe because it follows more closely (one of) the standard ways of
filing correspondence - maintaining a paper file by adding each new
document on top on top of the 'pile'. 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Dale]

Graham Murray wrote:
> Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> There are many devices and webmail services that do quoting in the
>> "Microsoft Outlook" style -- putting a one-line divider between the
>> reply and the original message. No indentation or nesting of replies.
>> This makes it harder to reply to specific parts of e-mails, but does
>> show you the entire conversation unaltered (when everyone uses
>> Outlook, anyway) -- and some companies actually /require/ that style
>> of quoting, believe it or not.
>>     
>
> Maybe because it follows more closely (one of) the standard ways of
> filing correspondence - maintaining a paper file by adding each new
> document on top on top of the 'pile'. 
>
>
>   

So that's why when I need to know the history of a conversation that I
have to flip that pile of papers over and start from the bottom.  I
always wondered why that was.  It made more work then, it still does.

Makes perfect sense.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Momesso Andrea]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1339 bytes --]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 04:14:38PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 March 2009 16:54:21 Momesso Andrea wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:14:14PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> > > On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:27:09 -0400, James Skinner wrote:
> > > > Top-posting is totally fine when emailing from a mobile device. It
> > > > does make it hard to follow a thread, but email's are time-stamped.
> > >
> > > It doesn't mater what device is used to send the email, it is the
> > > recipient that is affected by the readability of the mail.
> >
> > Unfortunatly my BlackBerry doesn't allow bottom posting. I hope you guys
> > forgive me for the few times I answer on this list using my mobile
> > device.
> 
> What? There's no down arrow on a BlackBerry?
> 
> I don't have one of those devices, and fully intend to never have one, so if 
> there's a stupid implementation of the reply function, I'd never know it. But 
> just asking, that's all.

Yes, there's down arrow on blackberry, the problem is in the blackberry
email client. It quotes the whole text as a block under the answer, and
does not give you the possibility to browse. I never used outlook, so I 
don't know if this is what other people called here "outlook behavior", 
btw it is pretty annoyng.

---
TopperH
http://topperh.blogspot.com

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 03:40:51 Stroller wrote:
> Every time you bottom post with more than a page or screenful of  
> quoting, a top-posting is justified.

Every time you find you have a screenful of quoted text you should just trim 
out the extraneous crap and return the mail to sanity. As I have done here.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on? - snippage

[Stroller]

On 25 Mar 2009, at 07:06, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> On Wednesday 25 March 2009 03:40:51 Stroller wrote:
>> Every time you bottom post with more than a page or screenful of
>> quoting, a top-posting is justified.
>
> Every time you find you have a screenful of quoted text you should  
> just trim
> out the extraneous crap and return the mail to sanity. As I have  
> done here.


That's great. Can you do that for all the multipage emails that reach  
my mailbox, please?


I find the inability - of otherwise intelligent people - to  
accommodate or see validity in differing points of view, quite  
astounding.

I'm not saying you should suddenly change your opinion and take the  
opposite position... but I wish that *just once* some of the bottom- 
posting snobs would accept that people who top-post just *might* have  
reasons for doing it.

During top- vs bottom-posting flamewars, one of the standard reasons  
given for top-posting is that "it saves you having to scroll to the  
bottom of the post", and the standard reply to this from the bottom  
posters is "well, you should be snipping anyway". Don't you think I  
might have heard that line before? So why don't you all practice it,  
then?

Whilst you righteous bottom-posters all fail to snip rigourously - and  
I just chose to highlight just ONE instance of this today - you give  
fuel to the top-posting fire.

Please don't bitch at me for taking the mickey, trying to illustrate a  
point. Bitch at all the fucknuts who are too darn lazy to snip.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on? - snippage

[AllenJB]

Can you ALL please take this off-topic conversation off list.

This is a general support list used by many users of a wide range of 
experience, therefore you can not expect to be able to enforce any 
standards, either way.

In addition, please keep language clean on this list.

AllenJB

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on? - snippage

[Roy Wright]

AllenJB wrote:
> Can you ALL please take this off-topic conversation off list.

+1

> In addition, please keep language clean on this list.

+1

Well said.

[gentoo-user] Re: Time to move on?

[Christer Ekholm]

Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> writes:
> Albert Hopkins wrote:
>>
>> Uh.. you don't "disable" it.  You simply don't use the alias.
>>
> Oh, OK.  <Dale waves hand over head.>  If it is set up to add that
> option, how do you tell it not to use it?

You can type backslash before a alias to not use the alias.

alias ls='ls --color'

now ls lists with colors and \ls just runs the first ls found in your
$PATH

--
 Christer

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 662 bytes --]

On Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:18:09 -0500, Dale wrote:

> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 

If you gave the alias the same name as the command, just use the full
path to the command to call it directly. But in this case, using a
different name for the alias makes much more sense. I have these two
aliases defined

alias smerge='sudo emerge --update --reinstall changed-use --ask @system'
alias wmerge='sudo emerge --update --deep --reinstall changed-use --ask --with-bdeps y @world'


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] Re: aliases

[Thanasis]

on 03/23/2009 05:18 AM Dale wrote the following:
>
> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 
>
> Dale
>   
You can also use the unalias command, eg:
$ alias ls='ls -la'
$ unalias ls
(then it stays unaliased for the session until you alias it again,
source .bashrc, etc...).
HTH :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: aliases

[Dale]

Thanasis wrote:
> on 03/23/2009 05:18 AM Dale wrote the following:
>   
>> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
>> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 
>>
>> Dale
>>   
>>     
> You can also use the unalias command, eg:
> $ alias ls='ls -la'
> $ unalias ls
> (then it stays unaliased for the session until you alias it again,
> source .bashrc, etc...).
> HTH :-)
>
>
>   

It doesn't like that command here.  It may be that I have the alias set
up in my profile instead of using the command alias.  Does that matter?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: aliases

[Thanasis]

on 03/27/2009 07:32 AM Dale wrote the following:
> Thanasis wrote:
>   
>> on 03/23/2009 05:18 AM Dale wrote the following:
>>   
>>     
>>> I'm not real familiar with aliases but know what it is.  If you use the
>>> alias method, how would you disable it for a one time run? 
>>>
>>> Dale
>>>   
>>>     
>>>       
>> You can also use the unalias command, eg:
>> $ alias ls='ls -la'
>> $ unalias ls
>> (then it stays unaliased for the session until you alias it again,
>> source .bashrc, etc...). 
>>     
>
> It doesn't like that command here.  It may be that I have the alias set
> up in my profile instead of using the command alias.  Does that matter?
>
>   
I don't think it matters.
What does it say?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: aliases

[Dale]

Thanasis wrote:
> on 03/27/2009 07:32 AM Dale wrote the following:
>   
>> Thanasis wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> You can also use the unalias command, eg:
>>> $ alias ls='ls -la'
>>> $ unalias ls
>>> (then it stays unaliased for the session until you alias it again,
>>> source .bashrc, etc...). 
>>>     
>>>       
>> It doesn't like that command here.  It may be that I have the alias set
>> up in my profile instead of using the command alias.  Does that matter?
>>
>>   
>>     
> I don't think it matters.
> What does it say?
>
>   

Well, I tried it again so I could paste the output here and it worked. 
I dunno.  At least it works now.  I guess you could do a source
/etc/profile to make it work again too.  May have to test that next. 
I'm sort of working on my car right now.  It not crank anymore.  :-( 

Thanks for the info.  Very neat.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Albert Hopkins]

On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 13:23 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> Personally I think we're in one of those
> unfortunate periods of time where there is a relatively high number of
> issues. I'm seeing it on all my machines. It's taking far more of my
> time to deal with this than I wish it would.
> 
> 1) ntp-update problems at boot time.

Hmm,  I'm not having any ntp-update problems on my machines.  Have you
submitted a bug report or searched the bug database?  Obviously this
isn't happening for everyone so if the right people don't know about it
then you can't expect it to get fixed.

> 2) emerge -DuN world building lots of packages that are already on the
> system but the LoG has apparently changed flags so emerge wants to
> rebuild them.

But that's what -N does! That's what it's documented to do. RTFM. If you
don't want that behavior then don't use -N.  Either use --reinstall
changed-use or don't use any USE-specific flags.  Personally I just let
portage re-install as it doesn't really change anything if you haven't
changed your use flags.

> 3) New and unclear (to me) messages about portage flag overrides
> caused by overlays I've been using for a while.

These are probably warnings about overlays overriding settings in the
regular portage profile.  Some overlays do this.  It's just a fact of
life.  Again, if you don't want to deal with it then don't use overlays
or at least choose overlays that don't do potentially bad things. It's
not the Gentoo devs responsibility if you bring in 3rd-party overlays
that change stuff.

So with the possible exception of #1, these appear to be "but it hurts
when I do that" problems, not issues with Gentoo stability.

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Albert Hopkins <marduk@letterboxes.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 13:23 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> Personally I think we're in one of those
>> unfortunate periods of time where there is a relatively high number of
>> issues. I'm seeing it on all my machines. It's taking far more of my
>> time to deal with this than I wish it would.
>>
>> 1) ntp-update problems at boot time.
>
> Hmm,  I'm not having any ntp-update problems on my machines.  Have you
> submitted a bug report or searched the bug database?  Obviously this
> isn't happening for everyone so if the right people don't know about it
> then you can't expect it to get fixed.

There's something going on here but I haven't tried to debug it. It's
more like ntp isn't finding servers. some machines work. Others don't.
timeouts waiting to boot. I need to find out where server names are
set and then see if there is a difference between all my machines.

No, I haven't filed a bug because:

1) I haven't figured out if it's my problem or Gentoo's yet
2) I have the impression that no one is reading or responding to bug
reports these days, based on my generally negative view of how portage
is being handled. But that's just my impression and not really worthy
of a discussion because it's all free labor and free software to me so
why should I complain?

>
>> 2) emerge -DuN world building lots of packages that are already on the
>> system but the LoG has apparently changed flags so emerge wants to
>> rebuild them.
>
> But that's what -N does! That's what it's documented to do. RTFM. If you
> don't want that behavior then don't use -N.  Either use --reinstall
> changed-use or don't use any USE-specific flags.  Personally I just let
> portage re-install as it doesn't really change anything if you haven't
> changed your use flags.

Thanks.

>
>> 3) New and unclear (to me) messages about portage flag overrides
>> caused by overlays I've been using for a while.
>
> These are probably warnings about overlays overriding settings in the
> regular portage profile.  Some overlays do this.  It's just a fact of
> life.  Again, if you don't want to deal with it then don't use overlays
> or at least choose overlays that don't do potentially bad things. It's
> not the Gentoo devs responsibility if you bring in 3rd-party overlays
> that change stuff.
>
> So with the possible exception of #1, these appear to be "but it hurts
> when I do that" problems, not issues with Gentoo stability.

I won't bother responding to the above.

Thanks,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Time to move on?

[Stroller]

On 22 Mar 2009, at 22:07, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>> ...
>>> 1) ntp-update problems at boot time.
>>
>> Hmm,  I'm not having any ntp-update problems on my machines.  Have  
>> you
>> submitted a bug report or searched the bug database?  Obviously this
>> isn't happening for everyone so if the right people don't know  
>> about it
>> then you can't expect it to get fixed.
>
> There's something going on here but I haven't tried to debug it. It's
> more like ntp isn't finding servers. some machines work. Others don't.
> timeouts waiting to boot. I need to find out where server names are
> set and then see if there is a difference between all my machines.

Not sure if this helps:
http://forum.soft32.com/linux/gentoo-user-init-ntpd-ntp-client-ftopict476010.html

Stroller.