[gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.

A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.

Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up, and
the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever it's
trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year, and I
can't even run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
motherboard.  Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
support got dropped.  But I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the
ballyhooed thing in Linux Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put
together these pieces:
* Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.  They
are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being made,
so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all.
*  2GB of DDR ECC memory
* about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata drives),
I feel it's still worthy of respect.  Some of these are in EZ-Dock docking
stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site).  The main
directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy.
* a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer.

So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
fine).

The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.

1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
2) Postfix
3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by
the cron daemon.
4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
5) NTP client and server
6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.

My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic
when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the
most out of it.  I can still do that for specific applications I'm working
on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now.  I have gotten pretty tired
of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up
that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.


So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not).  I'm just not in the target
market for Gentoo any more.  It was fun, though.
-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Mark Shields]

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On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:

> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>
> A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
> longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
> SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
> deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
>
> Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up,
> and the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever
> it's trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year,
> and I can't even run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
> motherboard.  Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
> support got dropped.  But I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the
> ballyhooed thing in Linux Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put
> together these pieces:
> * Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.
> They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being
> made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all.
> *  2GB of DDR ECC memory
> * about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata drives),
> I feel it's still worthy of respect.  Some of these are in EZ-Dock docking
> stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site).  The main
> directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy.
> * a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer.
>
> So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
> laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
> fine).
>
> The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.
>
> 1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
> 2) Postfix
> 3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by
> the cron daemon.
> 4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
> 5) NTP client and server
> 6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.
>
> My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic
> when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the
> most out of it.  I can still do that for specific applications I'm working
> on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now.  I have gotten pretty tired
> of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up
> that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.
>
>
> So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not).  I'm just not in the target
> market for Gentoo any more.  It was fun, though.
> --
> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
>
>

You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system
scare you away?

Have you tried using an older live cd?  If it's a video issue, maybe
detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's
an option for that)?

It's doable man, don't give up.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
>> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>>
>> A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
>> longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
>> SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
>> deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
>>
>> Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up,
>> and the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever
>> it's trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year,
>> and I can't even run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
>> motherboard.  Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
>> support got dropped.  But I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the
>> ballyhooed thing in Linux Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put
>> together these pieces:
>> * Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.
>> They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being
>> made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all.
>> *  2GB of DDR ECC memory
>> * about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata
>> drives), I feel it's still worthy of respect.  Some of these are in EZ-Dock
>> docking stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site).
>> The main directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy.
>> * a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer.
>>
>> So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
>> laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
>> fine).
>>
>> The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.
>>
>> 1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
>> 2) Postfix
>> 3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by
>> the cron daemon.
>> 4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
>> 5) NTP client and server
>> 6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.
>>
>> My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic
>> when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the
>> most out of it.  I can still do that for specific applications I'm working
>> on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now.  I have gotten pretty tired
>> of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up
>> that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.
>>
>>
>> So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not).  I'm just not in the target
>> market for Gentoo any more.  It was fun, though.
>> --
>> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
>>
>>
>
> You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system
> scare you away?
>
> Have you tried using an older live cd?  If it's a video issue, maybe
> detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's
> an option for that)?
>
> It's doable man, don't give up.
>

Of course it's doable.  It's just the last straw.  This left my web site
down for a week; I obviously can't always keep up with Gentoo's
requirements, so I'm going to an easier distro that I'm equally familiar
with.


-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Dale]

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Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@gmail.com 
> <mailto:laebshade@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your
>     system scare you away?
>
>     Have you tried using an older live cd?  If it's a video issue,
>     maybe detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the
>     framebuffer (there's an option for that)?
>
>     It's doable man, don't give up.
>
>
> Of course it's doable.  It's just the last straw.  This left my web 
> site down for a week; I obviously can't always keep up with Gentoo's 
> requirements, so I'm going to an easier distro that I'm equally 
> familiar with.
>
>
> -- 
> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
>

But you will be back.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-)

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Mick]

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On Friday 27 May 2011 05:31:15 Dale wrote:
> Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@gmail.com
> > 
> > <mailto:laebshade@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >     You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your
> >     system scare you away?
> >     
> >     Have you tried using an older live cd?  If it's a video issue,
> >     maybe detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the
> >     framebuffer (there's an option for that)?
> >     
> >     It's doable man, don't give up.
> > 
> > Of course it's doable.  It's just the last straw.  This left my web
> > site down for a week; I obviously can't always keep up with Gentoo's
> > requirements, so I'm going to an easier distro that I'm equally
> > familiar with.
> 
> But you will be back.  ;-)

Ha, ha, ha!  :-))

Ubuntu has come in leaps and bounds over the years and its maintenance is now 
easy-peasy.  The problems start when you depart from the vanilla Ubuntu distro 
and end up with a modified system - I have been looking after a laptop with 
Ubuntu for a couple of years now and as long as you keep to the distro way of 
doing things it pretty much runs without problems and upgrades are almost 
seamless.

That said for someone who's been using Gentoo for some time now it should not 
be a big deal to look after a machine like Kevin's, even if the monitor won't 
play initially.  I'm still running Gentoo on a 13 year old Pentium III 1GHz 
laptop which is refusing to die and compiling anything serious on it is at 
least an overnight affair.

The monitor problem is probably a KMS configuration issue.  Add nomodeset at 
the boot line and you should probably get your monitor again.

Before you throw in the towel on Gentoo completely, may I recommend 
SystemRescueCD.  It is updated more often, has the latest drivers and pretty 
much works better that the Gentoo LiveCD (most of the time).  The only thing 
it does not have is star, which is a package I prefer to do fs backups, but 
that's irrelevant anyway.

Of course Kevin only knows what is best for Kevin.  Enjoy your retirement!

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 27 May 2011 11:55:48 Mick wrote:

> ... may I recommend SystemRescueCD.  It is updated more often, has the
> latest drivers and pretty much works better that the Gentoo LiveCD (most
> of the time).

Another point in its favour is that it starts RAID and LVM itself, which 
saves a fair bit of messing about if you use either of those.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[BRM]

From: Mark Shields <laebshade@gmail.com>
>
>To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
>Sent: Thu, May 26, 2011 9:57:26 PM
>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo
>
>
>On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a little 

>sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>>
>>A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no 
>>longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via SSH 
>>
>>from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first deciding and 
>>
>>then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
>>
>>Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up, and the 
>>
>>latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever it's trying 
>
>>is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year, and I can't even 
>>
>>run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the motherboard.  Like 
>>the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe support got dropped.  But 

>>I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the ballyhooed thing in Linux 
>>Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put together these pieces: 
>>
>>* Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.  They are 
>>
>>old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being made, so the 

>>clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all. 
>>
>>*  2GB of DDR ECC memory
>>* about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata drives), I 
>>feel it's still worthy of respect.  Some of these are in EZ-Dock docking 
>>stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site).  The main 
>>directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy.
>>* a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer.
>>
>>So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of 
>>laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just fine).
>>
>>The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.
>>
>>1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
>>2) Postfix
>>3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by the 

>>cron daemon.
>>4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
>>5) NTP client and server
>>6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.
>>
>>My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic when 
>
>>I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the most out 

>>of it.  I can still do that for specific applications I'm working on, but 
>>otherwise it's really a non-issue now.  I have gotten pretty tired of updates 
>>that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up that once or 
>>twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.  
>>
>>
>>So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not).  I'm just not in the target 
>>market for Gentoo any more.  It was fun, though.
>>-- 
>>Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
>>
>>
>
>
>
>You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system scare 
>you away?
>
>Have you tried using an older live cd?  If it's a video issue, maybe detecting 
>your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's an option for 

>that)?
>It's doable man, don't give up.

Probably needs to switch to the open source radeon driver instead of the ATI 
binary driver if he hasn't already too.
My 2004 laptop had that issue a couple years back. I initially installed the ATI 
driver (which I haven't seemed to be able get rid of now), and then they (ATI) 
dropped support for the R250 line-up.
I switched over the open source radeon driver and all works just fine and dandy.

Ben

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>
> A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
> longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
> SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
> deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.

Sorry to see you go!

> The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.
>
> 1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
> 2) Postfix
> 3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by
> the cron daemon.
> 4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
> 5) NTP client and server
> 6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.

Maybe you can run them from your previous gentoo installation inside a
chroot until you can reproduce them in Ubuntu proper.

> My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic
> when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the
> most out of it.  I can still do that for specific applications I'm working
> on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now.  I have gotten pretty tired
> of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up
> that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.

I have a laptop from 2004 and am increasingly irritated by the slow
build times. Keeping Gentoo up-to-date with it takes a very long time,
especially since I use it so infrequently. Having several days worth
of compiling just to bring it up to date is tiring, when it causes the
fan to blow at full speed (and full decibels) and heat which
approaches that of the Sun. If I ever get around to it, I'm going to
give Sabayon a try. Hopefully then I'll have the familiar Gentoo setup
but without the building from source.

> So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not).  I'm just not in the target
> market for Gentoo any more.  It was fun, though.

After using Gentoo for so many years, I find the maintenance in Ubuntu
to be rather anti-climactic. "256 packages to update? Oh no! Oh, look,
it's done already."  :)

Good luck and congratulations on your retirement.

Paul

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Stroller]

On 27/5/2011, at 12:28am, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> ...
> * Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.  They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all. 

I *think* at that age those may be single-core hyperthreading chips, which would nevertheless show in (for instance) `top` as 4 cores. I won't swear to this, though.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:00 PM, Stroller
<stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>wrote:

>
> On 27/5/2011, at 12:28am, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > ...
> > * Two XEON chips.  I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.
>  They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips.  I got the slowest still being
> made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz.  On 4 cores, it's not bad at all.
>
> I *think* at that age those may be single-core hyperthreading chips, which
> would nevertheless show in (for instance) `top` as 4 cores. I won't swear to
> this, though.
>
> Stroller.
>
>
> Actually, you're right.  I got two chips so I could work with "real"
threads and thread control.  The hyperthreading was a surprise, and might
have done quite as well by themselves.  Anyway, it still works fine and the
only thing likely to make me upgrade is that the card slots are all PCI-X
low voltage (extra cutout in the connector).  As time goes on I'm going to
want to add things, and I may wind up with a new mobo fairly soon.


-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Marc Joliet]

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Am Thu, 26 May 2011 16:28:46 -0700
schrieb "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com>:

> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>
> A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
> longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
> SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
> deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
> 
> Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up, and
> the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever it's
> trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year, and I
> can't even run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
> motherboard.  Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
> support got dropped.
[...]

(I realise your decision is made, but if this is the bug I think it is, this
has nothing to do with Gentoo in particular.)

I wonder which kernel version you use, because in 2.6.36/37 I was hit by a nasty
EDID parsing bug. Actually, IIRC the code for parsing EDIDs was updated to
understand more features or something, and that triggered errors that didn't
come up before because those parts of the response from the monitor were simply
ignored until then (or something like that). This lead to my own monitor not
responding for over a minute at a time (sometimes going blank in between) and
other people complained that it left theirs permanently blank.

I think this is the original bug:
  
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31943

which contains a workaround (with patch):

  "The drm EDID checker is pretty strict about what EDIDs it will accept.  Try
   this patch and add drm.edid_strict=0 to your kernel command line."

For me, upgrading to 2.6.38 helped, I don't see the problem anymore (though
other people report otherwise).

*If* this is the bug, it makes me wonder why you don't see it under Ubuntu.

Good luck with Ubuntu!
-- 
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

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Re: [gentoo-user] No KMS for ATI Rage* (was: Goodbye, Gentoo)

[Felix Miata]

On 2011/05/27 14:56 (GMT+0200) Marc Joliet composed:

> Kevin O'Gorman wrote:

>> ...The video card is an ATI Rage XL...

> I wonder which kernel version you use, because in 2.6.36/37 I was hit by a nasty
> EDID parsing bug. Actually, IIRC the code for parsing EDIDs was updated to
> understand more features or something, and that triggered errors that didn't
> come up before because those parts of the response from the monitor were simply
> ignored until then (or something like that). This lead to my own monitor not
> responding for over a minute at a time (sometimes going blank in between) and
> other people complained that it left theirs permanently blank.

> I think this is the original bug:

>    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31943

> which contains a workaround (with patch):

>    "The drm EDID checker is pretty strict about what EDIDs it will accept.  Try
>     this patch and add drm.edid_strict=0 to your kernel command line."

> For me, upgrading to 2.6.38 helped, I don't see the problem anymore (though
> other people report otherwise).

> *If* this is the bug, it makes me wonder why you don't see it under Ubuntu.

I suspect the *buntu installer checks to see if the video chip is supported 
for KMS, and applies nomodeset to Grub's cmdline when not. No ATI Rage* chip 
is supported by KMS. With such an old laptop, could be he needs both 
nomodeset and drm.edid_strict=0. I have a 1400x1050 Dell laptop that uses the 
r128 driver, and its EDID is definitely broken. Whether I had the black 
screen problem I don't remember, but it's very possible it's what caused me 
to discover the existence of drm.edid_strict=0 in order to escape from either 
an 800x600 X or black screens.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 5:56 AM, Marc Joliet <marcec@gmx.de> wrote:

> Am Thu, 26 May 2011 16:28:46 -0700
> schrieb "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com>:
>
> > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> > little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> >
> > A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could
> no
> > longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in
> via
> > SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs.  I was busy at the time, first
> > deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
> >
> > Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up,
> and
> > the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all.  Whatever
> it's
> > trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year,
> and I
> > can't even run the consoles.  The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
> > motherboard.  Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
> > support got dropped.
> [...]
>
> (I realise your decision is made, but if this is the bug I think it is,
> this
> has nothing to do with Gentoo in particular.)
>
> I wonder which kernel version you use, because in 2.6.36/37 I was hit by a
> nasty
> EDID parsing bug. Actually, IIRC the code for parsing EDIDs was updated to
> understand more features or something, and that triggered errors that
> didn't
> come up before because those parts of the response from the monitor were
> simply
> ignored until then (or something like that). This lead to my own monitor
> not
> responding for over a minute at a time (sometimes going blank in between)
> and
> other people complained that it left theirs permanently blank.
>
> I think this is the original bug:
>
>  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31943
>
> which contains a workaround (with patch):
>
>  "The drm EDID checker is pretty strict about what EDIDs it will accept.
>  Try
>   this patch and add drm.edid_strict=0 to your kernel command line."
>
> For me, upgrading to 2.6.38 helped, I don't see the problem anymore (though
> other people report otherwise).
>
> *If* this is the bug, it makes me wonder why you don't see it under Ubuntu.
>
> Good luck with Ubuntu!
>
> Thanks.  It's up, its 2.5.38 which may explain a little.  I ported my usual
selections (think "world")
from my laptops, downloaded and installed around 1400 packages in a bit over
5 hours.
This included both libreoffice (the default) and openoffice (from the
selections), apache,
gimp, on and on, and would surely have taken a week or so under Gentoo.

Today, I port over my apache configuration and my embarrassing downtime is
ended.
-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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[gentoo-user] Re: Goodbye, Gentoo

[walt]

On 05/26/2011 04:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:

> Now, a couple of months into my retirement
...
> in 2002 when I finished my PHD

Retiring 9 years after finishing your education?

WTF are the rest of us doing wrong?

Drop by here occasionally to give us a progress report :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 5:59 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 05/26/2011 04:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
>
> > Now, a couple of months into my retirement
> ...
> > in 2002 when I finished my PHD
>
> Retiring 9 years after finishing your education?
>

Nice to know that somebody can do the math :o).
I got a late start.  I was 52 (IIRR) when I started grad school and 59 when
I finished my PhD.

WTF are the rest of us doing wrong?
>
> Drop by here occasionally to give us a progress report :)
>

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 15:50 on Saturday 28 May 2011, Kevin O'Gorman 
did opine thusly:

> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 5:59 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 05/26/2011 04:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > > Now, a couple of months into my retirement
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > in 2002 when I finished my PHD
> > 
> > Retiring 9 years after finishing your education?
> 
> Nice to know that somebody can do the math :o).
> I got a late start.  I was 52 (IIRR) when I started grad school and 59 when
> I finished my PhD.

That's excellent news. I've wanted to go back and get a PhD in math for ... 
well it feels like for ages.

Now I can put off starting for 7 more years and still stay within the bounds 
of "what has already been done at least once"

:-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin O'Gorman 
did opine thusly:

> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.

I know how you feel :-)

I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount of 
work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat shit 
crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all need a daily 
fix or we need to prove we can still do it.

Kevin, you were around here for ages and you certainly pulled your fair share 
of the load. FLOSS thrives on people just like that. But if Gentoo doesn't 
suit your needs anymore, then so be it.

Doesn't mean you won't be missed though. Best of luck for the future. [Like 
Dale, I think you'll be back. See para 2 :-) ]

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Pandu Poluan]

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 15:06, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin O'Gorman
> did opine thusly:
>
>> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
>> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>
> I know how you feel :-)
>
> I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount of
> work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat shit
> crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all need a daily
> fix or we need to prove we can still do it.
>

Shhh... don't let the Narc Task Force hear that!!

That said, I agree... control-freaks like me feel... lost... when
using binary-based distros.

Rgds,
-- 
Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~
Visit my Blog: http://pepoluan.posterous.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Daniel da Veiga]

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On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 20:28, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:

> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>
> So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
> laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
> fine).
>

Good luck.
A friend just dropped Ubuntu cause they simply decided to use Unity, and the
dashboard is just (his words) weird. He was used to the Gnome look, and they
simply changed everthing with an upgrade.

I stick with Gentoo, at least I know my next upgrade won't change my whole
interface...

-- 
Daniel da Veiga

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 18:38 on Saturday 28 May 2011, Daniel da Veiga 
did opine thusly:

> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 20:28, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel a
> > little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> > 
> > So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
> > laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
> > fine).
> 
> Good luck.
> A friend just dropped Ubuntu cause they simply decided to use Unity, and
> the dashboard is just (his words) weird. He was used to the Gnome look,
> and they simply changed everthing with an upgrade.
> 
> I stick with Gentoo, at least I know my next upgrade won't change my whole
> interface...


Ubuntu are simply doing what KDE already did - take a risk, go with something 
new, try to stay ahead of the curve.

Unity works fine on my netbook with 600 vertical pixels. I'm not sure it would 
work well on my 1920x1200 notebook though. That's the risk one takes with 
disruptive technologies, you might annoy some of your users



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>wrote:

> Apparently, though unproven, at 18:38 on Saturday 28 May 2011, Daniel da
> Veiga
> did opine thusly:
>
> > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 20:28, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel
> a
> > > little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> > >
> > > So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple
> of
> > > laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
> > > fine).
> >
> > Good luck.
> > A friend just dropped Ubuntu cause they simply decided to use Unity, and
> > the dashboard is just (his words) weird. He was used to the Gnome look,
> > and they simply changed everthing with an upgrade.
> >
> > I stick with Gentoo, at least I know my next upgrade won't change my
> whole
> > interface...
>
>
> Ubuntu are simply doing what KDE already did - take a risk, go with
> something
> new, try to stay ahead of the curve.
>
> Unity works fine on my netbook with 600 vertical pixels. I'm not sure it
> would
> work well on my 1920x1200 notebook though. That's the risk one takes with
> disruptive technologies, you might annoy some of your users
>
>
My hardware is not capable enough to run unity, so it logs into Gnome 2, the
familiar
interface.  I'm eventually going to upgrade the mobo and video, and I'll get
to visit
with Unity on my own schedule.  I generally stick to the LTS versions, which
remain
supported for 3 years.  I don't see the point of more frequent upgrades
because
as an old-timer, I am perfectly happy with the tools I'm used to and find
myself
increasingly exhausted on the learning curves.  I can do it, but I want
there to be
a really good view at the top. :o)

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alex Schuster]

Alan McKinnon writes:

> Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin
> O'Gorman did opine thusly:
> > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel
> > a little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> 
> I know how you feel :-)
> 
> I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount
> of work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat
> shit crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all
> need a daily fix or we need to prove we can still do it.

I tried various distros (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Libranet, RedHat), but when 
I started using Gentoo, I was hooked. No fancy shmancy GUIs that hide what's 
really going on beneath, and that often enough have their own bugs so that 
it's easier to not use them. Rolling updates, no fear that upgrades mess up 
everything. Good documentation, that explains what has do be done and why, 
instead of just telling me what to do and where to click.

Yes, Gentoo means a lot of work to do. But for me it's less than before, all 
in all. And I can fix many things myself. When I had trouble with other 
distros, I was often unable so find a solution, apart from waiting for the 
next release. Which introduced new problems.

I installed some Ubuntus recently, that's supposed to be very easy to use, 
but not for me. The default install medium does not know much about LVM, I 
had to fetch an alternate install medium for this. After all updates were 
done, I ran into an old bug that killed all initramfs images after 
installing a new kernel. I found some threads of users who had no clue what 
to do now, in my case even older kernels were affected. It was simple to 
fix, but not for inexperienced users who had no clue what to do, apart from 
waiting for some Linux guy to help them or re-install. NIS and automount 
stuff sometimes fails, I was not able to find the cause for this, despite 
many threads mentioning this. Sometimes a simple reboot solves this, 
sometimes not. I have no clue.

It seems to work well on standard desktop systems, though. If the default is 
fine for you, Ubuntu is not bad I think. easier to set up, easier to 
maintain. But then I installed it on a notebook with little RAM, and ran 
into various problems. The installer even crashed once. I use Linux a lot, I 
administer some Linux servers, but I felt too stupid to install Ubuntu and 
WLAN via ndiswrapper.

And then there's things happening like the packet manager front-end refusing 
to start because the automatic update notification is still active, and only 
once instance of a package manager can be running at a time. Okay, this is 
not a big problem, just close the other application (or kill it, if another 
user has it open). But hey, with portage I can not only run queries while 
another portage process is running, I can even do it while emerge is 
installing things, and nowadays I can even have multiple emerges run in 
parallel without trouble. I got used to this.

BTW, in the past when I used Debian (ten years ago), it happened for two 
times that apt (the package manager) got corrupted and no longer worked. I 
didn't even know what I did wrong, in one case I was only following advice 
others gave me. The mailing list was no help at all, they suggested to 
simply re-install. Oh my, how I hate to do so and to configure everything 
again. And wait for the problems to happens again.

My Mom's new PC would get Ubuntu, as I do not want to spend too much time 
installing, and because she doesn't need much special configuring. But I 
think I will try ArchLinux which I heard good things of, but did not try 
yet.

	Wonko

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 14:30 on Tuesday 31 May 2011, Alex Schuster 
did opine thusly:

> Alan McKinnon writes:
> > Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin
> > 
> > O'Gorman did opine thusly:
> > > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel
> > > a little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
> >
> > 
> >
> > I know how you feel :-)
> >
> > 
> >
> > I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount
> > of work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat
> > shit crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all
> > need a daily fix or we need to prove we can still do it.
> 
> I tried various distros (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Libranet, RedHat), but
> when  I started using Gentoo, I was hooked. No fancy shmancy GUIs that
> hide what's really going on beneath, and that often enough have their own
> bugs so that it's easier to not use them. Rolling updates, no fear that
> upgrades mess up everything. Good documentation, that explains what has do
> be done and why, instead of just telling me what to do and where to click.

That's what keep me on Gentoo for my own machines (bar one) and I have never 
needed to re-install it anywhere. 

But at work, things are different. Gentoo is banned from the -prod machines 
(the risk of some n00b admin running "emerge uND world" and walking away is 
too great, plus even just (deep) upgrading a single package is often more than 
a reasonable amount of work for someone who doesn't know portage.

It's encouraged on -dev, mostly because I can change versions of almost 
anything with no hassle at all. A developer wants python-3.2 on a box that 
already has 2.4 and 2.7? No problem!

I do run Ubuntu on the netbook, but I treat that like it was an Android device 
or a big web browser i.e. I don't try and get fancy and mostly stick with what 
the installer and apt want to do.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo

[Mick]

On 31 May 2011 14:38, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 14:30 on Tuesday 31 May 2011, Alex Schuster
> did opine thusly:
>
>> Alan McKinnon writes:
>> > Apparently, though unproven, at 01:28 on Friday 27 May 2011, Kevin
>> >
>> > O'Gorman did opine thusly:
>> > > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine.  I feel
>> > > a little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I know how you feel :-)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I've tried to get away from Gentoo several times, and failed. The amount
>> > of work we all put into keeping things working is best described as "bat
>> > shit crazy", but we do it anyway. Maybe it's like a drug thing, we all
>> > need a daily fix or we need to prove we can still do it.
>>
>> I tried various distros (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Libranet, RedHat), but
>> when  I started using Gentoo, I was hooked. No fancy shmancy GUIs that
>> hide what's really going on beneath, and that often enough have their own
>> bugs so that it's easier to not use them. Rolling updates, no fear that
>> upgrades mess up everything. Good documentation, that explains what has do
>> be done and why, instead of just telling me what to do and where to click.
>
> That's what keep me on Gentoo for my own machines (bar one) and I have never
> needed to re-install it anywhere.
>
> But at work, things are different. Gentoo is banned from the -prod machines
> (the risk of some n00b admin running "emerge uND world" and walking away is
> too great, plus even just (deep) upgrading a single package is often more than
> a reasonable amount of work for someone who doesn't know portage.
>
> It's encouraged on -dev, mostly because I can change versions of almost
> anything with no hassle at all. A developer wants python-3.2 on a box that
> already has 2.4 and 2.7? No problem!
>
> I do run Ubuntu on the netbook, but I treat that like it was an Android device
> or a big web browser i.e. I don't try and get fancy and mostly stick with what
> the installer and apt want to do.

These days I install OpenSUSE, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu on *other*
people's machines.  I found out really early in the process of
becoming familiar with Linux that Gentoo is the only self-healing OS
for me.  ;-)

I had to reinstall Fedora twice, OpenSUSE 3 times and Ubuntu twice,
because they kept corrupting themselves.  Perhaps things have improved
since (well I know that Ubuntu has improved significantly over  the
years) but nothing gives me the flexibility and breadth of choice that
Gentoo does.

On the other hand if one's needs are simple or conveniently met by the
vanilla Ubuntu or other binary distro, then perhaps that's all they
need to bother with.  Updates are done in a matter of seconds and
complete version upgrades completed in a matter of minutes.  I was
actually quite impressed last time that Ubuntu upgraded itself without
breaking into a sweat.  Given past experience I was expecting it to
corrupt itself and not boot again without a bare bones reinstall - but
was proven wrong!
-- 
Regards,
Mick