[gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan E. Davis]

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Hope not to bother, but ask advice about converting a nominally successful
Sabayon install to Gentoo.

I've been away from Gentoo for a while, found Ubuntu a joy if for no other
reason than to have time to do what I want to use my system for.  I had
found Gentoo required an inordinant amount of time to maintain, and in
several installs, I have always been drawn away by the siren call of newer
and better unstable packages: eventually the systems became inconsistent
enough that I had to bail out.  I tried all kinds of make world, etc.,
tricks and tips.  Have NEVER had an emerge update to world go completely
well.  Maybe one of the problems is the number of packages I install.  I
just cannot spend three hours a day maintaining a system!

Two serious problems for me were Emacs as done for Ubuntu, and the lack of
TeXlive 2008.

But Ubuntu has some serious shortcomings, and some not so serious ones.  I
ended up installing Sabayon 4.1, and it's ok.  Had some trouble with "equo":
still don't really understand what it does, but I eventually have been using
emerge and just installing software of my choosing.  The experience has been
somewhat elevating, in that none of the problems I've encountered over the
past week have been insurmountable.

Meanwhile I am brushing up on Gentoo installation methods, with an eye to
being ready if the time comes ...

So what I am asking this list is about the differences and similarities
between Sabayon and Gentoo.  Years ago, I did the same thing, but in a short
time, my system was hosed when I started using emerge.  This time, seemingly
I have better luck, but I have not installed packages.

May I request pointers to useful information on this topic?  (The conversion
of a modern Sabayon install to Gentoo)?

Gentoo makes the most sense to me.  But Sabayon already has the hardware
under control.

Thank you,

Alan


Alan Davis

"...can the human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe, but you'd
definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces."

   -- Woody Allen, quoted by B. A. Palevitz

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Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Philip Webb]

090626 Alan E. Davis sought:
> advice about converting a nominally successful Sabayon install to Gentoo.

-- details snipped --

so what's your hardware & what do you use your machine for ?
Gentoo is not for everyone, but it's not difficult to install or maintain:
your experiences don't sound typical of a sensible user (smile).

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

Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan E. Davis]

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Sensible?  What's that?

I think if my use has been beyond sensible, it's mainly in one or two areas:
I keep alot of software installed; and I keep up to date on a number of
programs (this is an area where I may need to redefine "sensible" from my
own perspective).

I keep this box set up for a wide variety of task, in the spirit of the
concept of a General Purpose Computer.  For example:

  - Writing
  - Editing videos
  - Once in a long while, writing a little program
  - math calculations sometimes large
  - spreadsheet (Open Office)
  - graphing
  - editing graphics
  - note taking
  - teaching responsibilities
  - printing
  - graphics editing/conversions
  - Repositories of digital content (personal): video, music, graphics
  - Sometimes media player (sometimes I have used mythtv)
  - LaTeXing (user level)
  - Internet browsing and research
  - archiving literature
  - scanning

Alot of the software I have round is kept as an exercize in capacity
builiding and maintainace in these and other areas.  I am a science
teacher---it sometimes seems like one of the few who is not using
Windoze---and I have a hand on some research and keep on top of the current
state in my field.  I have been called an eclectic.

Often have gnome (sometimes an overlay) and kde 4.X, as well as fluxbox and
perhaps a couple of other window managers.  I like to keep enlightenment17
around, as it has a small footprint.

I try to keep up to date, but I am not a computer scientist, so I often will
tolerate some sloppiness in the system, and may overlook maintainance.


Alan Davis

"...can the human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe, but you'd
definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces."

   -- Woody Allen, quoted by B. A. Palevitz


On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 12:26 AM, Philip Webb <purslow@ca.inter.net> wrote:

> 090626 Alan E. Davis sought:
> > advice about converting a nominally successful Sabayon install to Gentoo.
>
> -- details snipped --
>
> so what's your hardware & what do you use your machine for ?
> Gentoo is not for everyone, but it's not difficult to install or maintain:
> your experiences don't sound typical of a sensible user (smile).
>
> --
> ========================,,============================================
> SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
> ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
> TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[pk]

Alan E. Davis wrote:

> I try to keep up to date, but I am not a computer scientist, so I often will
> tolerate some sloppiness in the system, and may overlook maintainance.

You can certainly overlook maintenance with Gentoo, and mainly do
security updates only. The problem is that Gentoo is in a constant
"running change mode", i.e. all individual packages (applications etc.)
are continually upgraded and you will eventually fall behind if you
don't keep up, making it difficult to catch up without reinstalling
(there are no Gentoo versions as in the binary distro sense). On the
other hand Gentoo gives you a lot of freedom to tweak the installed
software to fit your precise needs, something that binary distros
doesn't allow. This is the reason why I use Gentoo.

HTH

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan E. Davis]

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I didn't say anything about my hardware.  The main hiccough, installing
gentoo, has been the ath5k module, which was at one time, I think, ath_pci.
Newer kernels may support this out of the box, in a gentoo install.  Beside
that, dual monitors are working with the nvidia drivers.

Another problem, a MAJOR problem, has been a recent marriage of pata and
sata drives, all as scsi, /dev/sdX.  With Gentoo, say a year or so ago, I
had no problem with mixing four drives, two sata and two pata.  Ubuntu
wasn't able to differentiate, and even on a recent install I was forced to
edit grub.conf (or grub.lst) before the system could boot off the right
drive.  Former /dev/hda became /dev/sda1, and former /dev/sda1 was
recognized as /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda3.  UUID numbers were confusing and I
then blamed Ubuntu for moving ahead too quickly.  I lost a bunch of archived
material due to that issue.  More recently, I see that Sabayon is also using
UUID numbers in fstab.  Still, I am now reluctant every time I try to
upgrade or install.  My recent attempt to update Ubuntu resulted in,
eventually the loss of my 90GB /home directory.  I will never know what I
lost.  (Yes, I know, should have backed it all up.)  It was my fault again,
but the failure of grub again to recognize the drive on which I had
installed, or the need to shuffle boot priorities.  I am still learning how
all this works.  Sabayon also had the same issue, so I moved partitions and
now have the system booting off of /dev/sda .

All this means I am pleased that sabayon is working, and I am able to treat
it as a gentoo system, without TOO much tweaking.  I think I cannot go back
to Ubuntu, as easy as that was.

That's about the hardware issues.



Alan

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Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:50:15 +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote:

> I didn't say anything about my hardware.  The main hiccough, installing
> gentoo, has been the ath5k module, which was at one time, I think,
> ath_pci. Newer kernels may support this out of the box, in a gentoo
> install.  Beside that, dual monitors are working with the nvidia
> drivers.

Ath5k works reasonably well, I've bee using it on this Eee Pc for a while.

> Another problem, a MAJOR problem, has been a recent marriage of pata and
> sata drives, all as scsi, /dev/sdX.  With Gentoo, say a year or so ago,
> I had no problem with mixing four drives, two sata and two pata.  Ubuntu
> wasn't able to differentiate, and even on a recent install I was forced
> to edit grub.conf (or grub.lst) before the system could boot off the
> right drive.  Former /dev/hda became /dev/sda1, and former /dev/sda1 was
> recognized as /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda3.  UUID numbers were confusing and I
> then blamed Ubuntu for moving ahead too quickly.  I lost a bunch of
> archived material due to that issue.  More recently, I see that Sabayon
> is also using UUID numbers in fstab.  Still, I am now reluctant every
> time I try to upgrade or install.

UUIDs are good for automated installers as they provide a level of
independence of device numbers. For manual install like Gentoo, you are
better off using filesystem labels. You can make sure they are unique and
they make fstab a lot easier to read.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Borg -- James Borg -- licensed to assimilate.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan E. Davis]

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Thank you for the useful advice.  One more question will help:  does the new
kernel support ath5k out of the box on an install?

Perhaps I can just edit the existing /etc/fstab, using device names.  The
device numbering is inconsistent between GNU/Linux distros under the (what I
presume to be) new scheme, with all devices names as /dev/sdX .

I'll prepare for a new gentoo install, and hope that the current sabayon
continues to act sanely as gentoo, as I update the system, package by
package.  So far a fair amount of hand work is involved, in updating gnome,
for example.


Alan

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Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 27 June 2009 02:28:59 Alan E. Davis wrote:
> Perhaps I can just edit the existing /etc/fstab, using device names.  The
> device numbering is inconsistent between GNU/Linux distros under the (what
> I presume to be) new scheme, with all devices names as /dev/sdX . 

Default kernel names are like that deliberately. The driver assigns a unique 
name in the order that devices are found, and the name depends only on 
whatever the author decided to give it. If you use the modern ATA subsystem to 
drive your disks, they get called sd*. The older drivers non-SCSI still call 
disks hd*.

This way you get a naming scheme that is guaranteed to be unique, but with no 
other guarantees whatsoever (not even consistency). It's the simplest thing 
that could possibly work (and a very sane engineering choice actually).

If that doesn't suit your needs, you can customize it with udev rules, or 
mount by device UUID, or mount by filesystem label.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Samstag 27 Juni 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Saturday 27 June 2009 02:28:59 Alan E. Davis wrote:
> > Perhaps I can just edit the existing /etc/fstab, using device names.  The
> > device numbering is inconsistent between GNU/Linux distros under the
> > (what I presume to be) new scheme, with all devices names as /dev/sdX .
>
> Default kernel names are like that deliberately. The driver assigns a
> unique name in the order that devices are found, and the name depends only
> on whatever the author decided to give it. If you use the modern ATA
> subsystem to drive your disks, they get called sd*. The older drivers
> non-SCSI still call disks hd*.
>
> This way you get a naming scheme that is guaranteed to be unique, but with
> no other guarantees whatsoever (not even consistency). It's the simplest
> thing that could possibly work (and a very sane engineering choice
> actually).
>
> If that doesn't suit your needs, you can customize it with udev rules, or
> mount by device UUID, or mount by filesystem label.

or you create a software raid setup and mount mdX. Since the kernel 
autoassembles the stuff you don't have to care about sdX or hdX or whateverX 
;)

Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Alan McKinnon]

On Saturday 27 June 2009 00:50:15 Alan E. Davis wrote:
> I didn't say anything about my hardware.  The main hiccough, installing
> gentoo, has been the ath5k module, which was at one time, I think,
> ath_pci.  Newer kernels may support this out of the box, in a gentoo
> install.  

My Acer Aspire One running Ubuntu needs that driver. IIRC up to 2.6.27, the 
ath5k driver was dodgy on certain chips but since 2.6.28 things are much 
better. The driver is in mainline as well so you should be able to just build 
it on 2.6.30 and have a workable system, without any need for the madwifi 
proprietary driver.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Seek advice: converting Sabayon to Gentoo ?

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Freitag 26 Juni 2009, Alan E. Davis wrote:
> Hope not to bother, but ask advice about converting a nominally successful
> Sabayon install to Gentoo.
>
> I've been away from Gentoo for a while, found Ubuntu a joy if for no other
> reason than to have time to do what I want to use my system for.  I had
> found Gentoo required an inordinant amount of time to maintain, and in
> several installs, I have always been drawn away by the siren call of newer
> and better unstable packages: eventually the systems became inconsistent
> enough that I had to bail out.  I tried all kinds of make world, etc.,
> tricks and tips.  Have NEVER had an emerge update to world go completely
> well.  Maybe one of the problems is the number of packages I install.  I
> just cannot spend three hours a day maintaining a system!
>
> Two serious problems for me were Emacs as done for Ubuntu, and the lack of
> TeXlive 2008.
>
> But Ubuntu has some serious shortcomings, and some not so serious ones.  I
> ended up installing Sabayon 4.1, and it's ok.  Had some trouble with
> "equo": still don't really understand what it does, but I eventually have
> been using emerge and just installing software of my choosing.  The
> experience has been somewhat elevating, in that none of the problems I've
> encountered over the past week have been insurmountable.
>
> Meanwhile I am brushing up on Gentoo installation methods, with an eye to
> being ready if the time comes ...
>
> So what I am asking this list is about the differences and similarities
> between Sabayon and Gentoo.  Years ago, I did the same thing, but in a
> short time, my system was hosed when I started using emerge.  This time,
> seemingly I have better luck, but I have not installed packages.
>
> May I request pointers to useful information on this topic?  (The
> conversion of a modern Sabayon install to Gentoo)?
>
> Gentoo makes the most sense to me.  But Sabayon already has the hardware
> under control.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Alan
>
>
> Alan Davis
>
> "...can the human soul be glimpsed through a microscope? Maybe, but you'd
> definitely need one of those very good ones with two eyepieces."
>
>    -- Woody Allen, quoted by B. A. Palevit

isn't sabayon nothing but an overlay over gentoo?
remove the overlay, emerge -auDn world and you should be fine... I think