Fri, 23 Feb 2007
Gentoo Linux
I use J-Pilot as a desktop PIM application for synchronizing with my Palm. Few days ago I found that it apparently leaks memory (J-Pilot bug entry, Fedora bug entry). The response to the J-Pilot bug entry was that the bug cannot be reproduced on the author's Gentoo, so it has to be a Fedora bug. So I have decided to install Gentoo in a virtual machine to test J-Pilot under it.
So far the installation was pretty straightforward, I created a
virtual disk image, created a filesystem on it, mounted, unpacked
the stage3 tarball and Portage snapshot to this filesystem,
and in the rest I have followed the
Gentoo Handbook
pretty closely (omitting steps which are not necessary for
chroot or virtual machine environment, such as building
my own kernel). In fact, since the Gentoo install runs in the
chroot environment,
the virtual machine is not necessary when everything you want to do
is to compile and test a single GUI application. So I am compiling
the packages in chroot instead of the virtual machine
(it is faster that way).
We have some Gentoo servers here, so I am already somewhat
familiar with the emerge command and USE flags.
So far I did not ran into bigger problems, just few annoyances
(some of which may definitely be an user error, as I am new to Gentoo):
- The
stage3does not contain a text editor! Every UNIX has to includevi! - The network setup mentions that either
ifconfig(8)orip(8)can be used in the network scripts. I wanted to use the later, butemerge iproute2has failed because of missing (or different) kernel headers. I had 2.6.20 unpacked in <chroot>/usr/src/linux, as this is what I currently run. I think the dependencies foriproute2should be fixed. - Gentoo Linux is apparently not
FHS-compliant: it has its Portage
directory under
/usreven though this directory is often written to. - When I tried to run "
USE=gtk emerge -p -v jpilot" (or something like that), the dependencies tried to install not only the X libraries (which is expected from the X app), but also the X server package together with ~20 graphics hardware driver packages. I don't need an X server there, it is a headless virtual machine! - The
stage3is huge. The whole system before my firstemergecommand had 1.6 GB. Of course, 600 MB of it was/usr/portage, but a gigabyte is still a lot for a minimal (essentially empty) system. - The
/etc/conf.dsucks. I had to symlink it as/etc/sysconfig, because I tend to use the later name anyway.
Now I am waiting for the compile to finish. When I am at it,
I want to explore the inner workings of their startup scripts
(rc-update and friends) and other Gentoo specialities as well.
I also wonder how they do SELinux
and how their default security policy look like.
6 replies for this story:
Honza wrote: Use -X
Hi, I think there is something like default USE, which means that you have to put -X if you do not want X server. At least that's what I would try. Best Honza P.S. Thx for this blog!
Yenya wrote: Re: -X
I thought (and the help file for USE option also says it), that -X is when I do not want X support at all in applications, not only the X server support.
finn wrote:
Have you reported these bugs? I mean the wrong linux headers and non-FHS compliancy?
Yenya wrote: Re: reporting bugs
I think the non-FHS compliancy (i.e. portage under /usr) is an architectural decision instead of a bug, and the iproute2 problem - maybe I did something wrong myself. When I install another Gentoo, I will try to reproduce it, and then maybe I will fill a bug report.
asd wrote:
*gentoo default editor is nano not vi!
Yenya wrote: Re: asd
... which makes Gentoo a non-UNIX system.