Re: [gentoo-user] mdev + xorg + Gnome up and running. :-)

[Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info>]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 14:32, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 08:41:48AM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote
>
> > Hmmm... are you planning to host an overlay?
> >
> > If so, I'll be willing to donate some of my time to provide some patched
> > ebuilds for packages that can function without udev but lazily specify
> > DEPEND=sys-fs/udev...
>
>  I wouldn't call it "lazy".  Before the hulabaloo about udev/initramfs,
> I don't think anybody was running mdev on Gentoo.  So there was no need
> for mdev in the ebuilds.  The only non-embedded distro to use mdev was
> Alpine linux.  And they also use uclibc.
>

Ah yes, sorry. That was originally tongue-in-cheek, but I now see it
may be too disparaging. My bad.

>  I'm not familiar with the server side of things.  I can follow
> instructions if supplied.  I don't know if the hosting provider I'm
> thinking of does rsync.  I never theought to ask.
>
>  I'll check on the dev list about the etiquitte regarding contacting
> upstream.  Even if a package works today with mdev, there's no guarantee
> about tomorrow.  It'll help if upstream knows that people are using
> their packages with mdev, and they take that into account when updating
> the software.
>
>  Note that my request for updating virtual/dev-manager went through OK.
> Once we test a "udev-required" package with mdev, and confirm it works,
> we should post a request on the Gentoo bugzilla to update Gentoo's
> ebuild.
>

Good idea.

> > ... and while at it, let's see if I can make a package containing
> > scripts to ease transitioning from udev to mdev. Maybe call it,
> > sys-utils/mdev-helper?
>
>  The kernel reconfig and rebuild, and sticking "init=/sbin/linuxrc"
> into the append line are user-specific.  I dual-boot 2 kernels
> ("production" and "experimental"), and I run lilo.  Somebody with only
> one kernel, and/or running GRUB will need to do things differently.  So
> a script won't help.  This is simple enough to copy+paste from docs
> to your terminal.
>

Well... as to the kernel requirement... nothing's stopping one from
emerging sys-fs/reiserfsprogs even when the kernel doesn't support
reiserfs ;)

The "init=/sbin/linuxrc" can be automated using script (and sed),
which we can imbue with the intelligence necessary to edit LILO/GRUB
conf. I do have a collection of my own scripts to make it easier to
install new Gentoo systems; one of them I whup up to automatically add
a new kernel into menu.lst and (optionally) modify the default kernel
[1].

What I have in mind for "helper scripts" would be (for example) a
script to ensure that, on boot, ethernet devices will maintain their
relative order. This needs to be stuck into /etc/mdev.conf (already
part of stage3).

(And if someone's well-versed enough in Linux, maybe he/she will
convert the shellscript into a simple -- and faster -- binary with
exact same functionality).

[1] https://bitbucket.org/pepoluan/gentoo-admin-kit/src/4ed95722b38f/grub-add-kernel.sh

Rgds,
--
FdS Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~

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