[gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Hunter Jozwiak]

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Hello,

 

After talking to a few diehard Gentoo fans at my local LUG, I decided I
would like to give Gentoo another shot. Are there any good books that can
supplement the Gentoo handbook as well as books that go more in depth than
the Gentoo chapter on Portage? One of the main issues I faced with Gentoo
when I first tried it is that I did not understand the power of package.use,
and I put everything in to make.conf. However, I feel that given enough
supplemental information, I can hopefully make Gentoo attempt 6 a more
permanent thing, and, eventually, migrate my servers over to it. Any input
is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Hunter


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Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Alan McKinnon]

On 18/03/2016 05:03, Hunter Jozwiak wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>  
> 
> After talking to a few diehard Gentoo fans at my local LUG, I decided I
> would like to give Gentoo another shot. Are there any good books that
> can supplement the Gentoo handbook as well as books that go more in
> depth than the Gentoo chapter on Portage? One of the main issues I faced
> with Gentoo when I first tried it is that I did not understand the power
> of package.use, and I put everything in to make.conf. However, I feel
> that given enough supplemental information, I can hopefully make Gentoo
> attempt 6 a more permanent thing, and, eventually, migrate my servers
> over to it. Any input is greatly appreciated.

I don't know of any books on running Gentoo. I strongly suspect any such
book wouldn't be much use though - Gentoo is a meta-distribution so you
can build anything you want. What you want and what's ain a book might
be very different things. Or, another way, let's look for a book called
"Dummies Guide to Using Bricks" - not really gonna work is it :-)

Understanding Gentoo involves using it and talking to the many good
awesome folks right here. Before long, you will start to understand more
and more. We'll help you out on the weak bits (like the bat-shit crazy
output portage tends to spew all over your screen sometimes....) and
it's strengths.

Things like package.use I don't think are really your problem, it's just
an example of one thing amongst many you don't quite understand yet, but
I'll answer anyway.

USE flags enable and disable features of software at compile-time. Take
for example a music player. Maybe it can store the metadata about your
music in flat files, in sqlite, in mysql or postgres. Now you must make
a choice where to put the flag. Maybe your music collection is HUGE and
postgres is the best fit.

If you add it to make.conf it becomes global and every piece of software
that supports postgres will now be rebuilt to give postgres support.
Maybe you don't need or want that.

A flag like that is best put into package.use where it applies only to
the package you list there. So postgres gets installed, the music player
gets support and your MTA does not.

Sometimes it's a grey area where to put a flag and you have to weigh
your choices carefully. But much more often it's kinda obvious, and more
familiarity makes it easier.

Stick around, many folks find learning Gentoo is well worth the effort.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Stroller]

> On Fri, 18 March 2016, at 6:07 am, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> … 
> USE flags enable and disable features of software at compile-time. Take
> for example a music player. Maybe it can store the metadata about your
> music in flat files, in sqlite, in mysql or postgres. Now you must make
> a choice where to put the flag. Maybe your music collection is HUGE and
> postgres is the best fit.
> 
> If you add it to make.conf it becomes global and every piece of software
> that supports postgres will now be rebuilt to give postgres support.
> Maybe you don't need or want that.
> 
> A flag like that is best put into package.use where it applies only to
> the package you list there. So postgres gets installed, the music player
> gets support and your MTA does not.

To expand on this example, if `emerge -p` showed your music player had flags for mp3, mp4 and aac files, I would probably set those in /etc/make.conf, because I want all music and video players and converters to support these common file types.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Alan McKinnon]

On 18/03/2016 17:29, Stroller wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 18 March 2016, at 6:07 am, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> … 
>> USE flags enable and disable features of software at compile-time. Take
>> for example a music player. Maybe it can store the metadata about your
>> music in flat files, in sqlite, in mysql or postgres. Now you must make
>> a choice where to put the flag. Maybe your music collection is HUGE and
>> postgres is the best fit.
>>
>> If you add it to make.conf it becomes global and every piece of software
>> that supports postgres will now be rebuilt to give postgres support.
>> Maybe you don't need or want that.
>>
>> A flag like that is best put into package.use where it applies only to
>> the package you list there. So postgres gets installed, the music player
>> gets support and your MTA does not.
> 
> To expand on this example, if `emerge -p` showed your music player had flags for mp3, mp4 and aac files, I would probably set those in /etc/make.conf, because I want all music and video players and converters to support these common file types.


Good point. This is where judgement comes in - what can probably go in
make.conf and what will be better in package.use.

I normally put general things like a/v codecs and hardware features
make.conf as I'm very likely into want it everywhere. If I use handbrake
to make mkv and mp4 rips, then I probably want mplayer, dragon, vlc and
all the other players to play them. Makes sense.

Then there's that other thread today that mentioned wayland. Some bit of
KDE must have it but you certainly don't want it global.

So a judgement call; which quite incidentally is the thing we sysadmins
get paid to have :-)


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Gregory Woodbury]

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Not sure of any books, but some documents on the Gentoo Wiki about the
various projects are helpful.

I use /etc/portage/package.{use,accept_keywords}/* in a somewhat unusual
way. For each package
that needs tuning the USE flags beyond the eselected profile and some
globals in make.conf, I have
a file named "<catedory>.<pkg>" (e.g. media-libs.mesa) with a few handling
some multiples.  This lets me
tune packages in a fine grained manner, and still see which ones I have
fixed quickly.

For example:
In eselect profile: default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/kde

In make.conf:
​ (may well repeat some from profile, try to group by functionality)​
USE="smp \
        cdr dvd dvdr css  usb -bluetooth \
        caps branding unicode ipv6 tcpd \
        kde qt4 qt3support plasma gtk -gnome \
        dbus udev udisks perl samba \
        icu idn maildir -mbox \
        alsa -pulseaudio ffmpeg -libav gstreamer \
        X glamor opengl xattr xine xinerama xv xvid \
        sdl wxwidgets \
        ogg theora vorbis flac dirac schroedinger mp3 mp4 matroska mtp \
        a52 aac audiofile cdda faac libsamplerate sndfile x264 \
        vdpau xcb vaapi quvi \
        lzma lzo lz4 zlib \
        cvs git subversion \
        sqlite mysql introspection \
        bash-completion vim-syntax \
        fontconfig truetype threads nptl \
        ruby_targets_ruby21 -ruby_targets_ruby19 -ruby19 \
        -nepomuk -semantic-desktop \
        -ldap -evo -eds \
        offensive"
​and an ls(1) of
/et​c/portage/package.accept_keywords
:

app-admin.mcelog
app-arch.lzma
app-cdr.k3b
app-emulation.qemu
app-emulation.virtualbox
app-forensics.unhide
app-portage.layman
app-text.yodl
dev-libs.libebml
dev-libs.nss
dev-libs.pugixml
dev-python.pyGPG
dev-python.pymountboot

...
virtual.ffmpeg
virtual.libusb
www-client.chromium
www-client.firefox
x11-libs.libva
x11-libs.libva-intel-driver
x11-libs.libva-vdpau-driver
x11-libs.wxGTK
zzzpackages.keywords


The last entry is an empty file to catch the "automagic" changes portage
may propose so that they can be
broken out into individual files.  package.use/* is similar.

I have found some wedged cases where there isn't any way to solve it except
by using
some "unstable" arch packages (while waiting for them to be stabilized.)
​It may seem unwieldy, but I fnid it much easier to deal with than one big
file with all the
packages isted in it.
For example, in /etc/portage/package.use/app-office.akonadi-server  I have:

​app-office/akonadi-server       soprano -sqlite

​which makes the emerge be quiet about having both mysql and sqlite enabled.

Don't be afraid to ask questions, it is an easy cure.​


-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

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Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 17 Mar 2016 23:03:47 -0400, Hunter Jozwiak wrote:

> After talking to a few diehard Gentoo fans at my local LUG, I decided I
> would like to give Gentoo another shot. Are there any good books that
> can supplement the Gentoo handbook

The Gentoo handbook really is the book. It's written by Gentoo devs so it
is always up to date, something that cannot always be said of print books
(a friend of mine wrote the Haynes Manual on Ubuntu some years ago,
few months later they released Unity!).

> as well as books that go more in
> depth than the Gentoo chapter on Portage?

The main mistake that people make with the Gentoo Handbook is that they
follow it carefully through installation, then stop. They have only read
chapter 1. The rest of the handbook, along with the Gentoo Wiki provide a
lot more information.

> One of the main issues I
> faced with Gentoo when I first tried it is that I did not understand
> the power of package.use, and I put everything in to make.conf.

No one gets it right first time, there are many choices and many ways of
doing things. No book can tell you which way is right for you, only
experience can do that. Getting things like this wrong is a natural part
of the Gentoo learning experience.

You will develop your way of doing things over time, and that way could
change as your needs do. Using your example of package.use, moving USE
flags from package.use to make.conf is an easy enough task if you need to
change. I tend to put them n package.use to start with then migrate to
make.conf if I find I am using the same flag on several packages. There's
also the choice of whether you make package.use (and its friends) and
make.conf a single file or a directory of files. Ask in here and you will
find proponents of both approaches, but it's an organisational choice,
whichever works for you is best.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"Mmmm, trouble with grammer have I, yes?" - Yoda

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Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 18 March 2016 09:08:53 Neil Bothwick wrote:

> No one gets it right first time, there are many choices and many ways of
> doing things. No book can tell you which way is right for you, only
> experience can do that. Getting things like this wrong is a natural part
> of the Gentoo learning experience.
> 
> You will develop your way of doing things over time, and that way could
> change as your needs do. Using your example of package.use, moving USE
> flags from package.use to make.conf is an easy enough task if you need to
> change. I tend to put them n package.use to start with then migrate to
> make.conf if I find I am using the same flag on several packages.

A simple way to start off is to see whether the USE flag is listed in 
/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc or use.local.desc. If the former, it's likely 
to affect many packages in a typical system so put it in make.conf; if the 
latter, it's likely to affect only a few of your packages so put it in 
package.use. You can always move it later if you want to, as Neil says.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

linuxcounter.net reg user 5290 since 1994/04/23

Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 18 Mar 2016 10:09:14 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:

> > You will develop your way of doing things over time, and that way
> > could change as your needs do. Using your example of package.use,
> > moving USE flags from package.use to make.conf is an easy enough task
> > if you need to change. I tend to put them n package.use to start with
> > then migrate to make.conf if I find I am using the same flag on
> > several packages.  
> 
> A simple way to start off is to see whether the USE flag is listed in 
> /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc or use.local.desc. If the former, it's
> likely to affect many packages in a typical system so put it in
> make.conf; if the latter, it's likely to affect only a few of your
> packages so put it in package.use. You can always move it later if you
> want to, as Neil says.


app-portage/euses is an easy way of looking up USE flags, give it the
name of a flag and it shows you the description. If it shows one or more
package names, the USE flag is defined in local.desc.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Top Oxymorons Number 33: American history

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Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 18 March 2016 12:03:46 Neil Bothwick wrote:

> Top Oxymorons Number 33: American history

Top Oxymorons Number 1a: atonal music.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

OT: Re: [gentoo-user] Giving Gentoo Another Go

[wabenbau]

Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

> On Friday 18 March 2016 12:03:46 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> 
> > Top Oxymorons Number 33: American history  
> 
> Top Oxymorons Number 1a: atonal music.

I don't agree to the second statement. ;-)

--
Regards
wabe

[gentoo-user] Re: Giving Gentoo Another Go

[James]

Neil Bothwick <neil <at> digimed.co.uk> writes:

> 
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2016 10:09:14 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> 
> > > You will develop your way of doing things over time, and that way
> > > could change as your needs do. Using your example of package.use,
> > > moving USE flags from package.use to make.conf is an easy enough task
> > > if you need to change. I tend to put them n package.use to start with
> > > then migrate to make.conf if I find I am using the same flag on
> > > several packages.  

The entire /etc/make.conf directory is parses, so you can take package.use
and make a dir out of it and then logically organize your flags into several
directories, once a system get's large and complex.


> > A simple way to start off is to see whether the USE flag is listed in 
> > /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc or use.local.desc. If the former, it's
> > likely to affect many packages in a typical system so put it in
> > make.conf; if the latter, it's likely to affect only a few of your
> > packages so put it in package.use. You can always move it later if you
> > want to, as Neil says.

> app-portage/euses is an easy way of looking up USE flags, give it the
> name of a flag and it shows you the description. If it shows one or more
> package names, the USE flag is defined in local.desc.



All good information. The exciting thing happening in Gentoo right now,
is some of the devs are promoting the concept of 'lazy flags'. This
basically means some new and additional features will be added to portage
or the Packaage Management system (portage, paludis, etc) where additional
user defined logic will 'automagically' make default and necessary 
modifications to flag configurations, and the user just reviews those
'auto-enhancements' or something like that. 


Gentoo never stops innovating, but the caveat is you have to be patient and
invest of yourself into learning Gentoo.


Gentoo is an addiction, which most of us are quite happy with. Gentoo also
has legendary status with many of the brightest minds in computer science,
for a myriad of valid reasons. Gentoo is something that is wonderful to be a
part of and is an 'honor_badge' of fortitude  because one can  deeply learn
about linux, software and a host of relevant technologies quite readily in a
Gentoo environment. 


Gentoo's future is very bright, unique and most rewarding. Gentoo is my pal
and my best friend and what I use to earn money.


hth,
James