Is putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" in make.conf a good idea?

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I have been noticing that I am unmasking more and more packages on my laptop because I have a need for newer ones that are considered stable by the upstream developers, but are soft masked in the portage tree. One example is KDE 4.3.5, which is a maintenance release that fixes bugs that I would rather not encounter.

I am starting to think that it might be easier if I just put ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" in make.conf and be done with it, as packages.keywords is becoming extremely disorganized (having something like 400 lines, most of which are KDE) and unmasking everything seems like it would simplify my life. I only apply updates when I have time to fix things, so I don't think any unexpected issues will be catastrophic. I am also trying this out in a virtual machine that is similarly configured to my laptop (although it cannot be 100% similarly configured due to hardware differences) to see if it works.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Is putting ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" in a production laptop's make.conf file a good idea provided that updates are only done when I have time to fix things that break? How should I expect my experience doing this to be relative to the Microsoft experience where Windows releases are beta software until Service Pack 2?

EzInKy · Veteran Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 1734 Location: Kentucky

I can't say it's a good idea despite running all my machines "~amd64" for years B-)

Seriously though, when you do change to "~arch" think of yourself as a "tester", not a "user". That way, when you run into glitches, you'll be more likely to solve problems instead of complain about them.
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d2_racing · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:32 am Post subject:

If you agree that one day you may break your box, then go for it.

Nowadays that kind of thing is not very frequent, but it can happen when major stuff hit the testing arch.

Good luck

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jonnevers · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:42 am Post subject:

both posts above pretty much cover the responsibility that comes with running full ~ARCH.

its fun and you get even closer to the bleeding edge.

the one thing that may or may *not* occur is that you (anyone) might have some sort of exotic (to everyone not you) set of installed packages that causes breakages that are unique to just you, and the forums and google may not possess adequate answers :twisted:

Naib · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 3:08 am Post subject:

"mixing arch and ~arch is like mixing your drinks. Too much and you will regret it"

ARCH is great but it lags behind on packages so if you want the latest & greatest you will have to start unmasking. the more you mix the increase chance of other issues.

I have been running ~amd64 now for quite a few years and I have had alot less issues from when I was running ARCH + managing a large package.keywords file.
Every now and again you come across a package that won't compile (so you add it to package.mask and file a bug) and even rarer you come across a system-b0rking issue (eg a bash issue from a few years back). but as long as you are confident in managing yr system and recovering from system breakages then going ~arch is ok
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Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

Thank you for all of your opinions. My virtual machine and laptop are very closely configured, so I am going to let the virtual machine finish compiling all of the unmasked packages and if everything is okay, I will go ahead with the upgrades on my laptop. If there is some problem, I will try to resolve it in a way that I will not encounter it on my laptop before I go ahead with it on my laptop.

AllenJB · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:37 am Post subject:

I've been mixing since forever without any issues. As long as you carefully read what portage is telling you, you won't have any issues.
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sparkplug · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2009 Posts: 13

I run ~x86 with fewer complaints than when I was running x86 and unkeywording.

It occurs to me that to avoid major biannual "breakage," you could sync, then wait a week before actually upgrading, in which time most problems that others might encounter would come up before then and you'd see the chatter and fixes. Heck, it's as simple as setting you upgrade cron job before your sync cron job, if you do such things.

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I am glad I ran the upgrades (or tried to anyway, I left emerge running with -a as an option and then went to bed without saying yes) in a virtual machine first. I caught some upgrades that I don't want, namely newer kernel sources and OpenRC. For the kernel sources, I masked >=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.32, but for OpenRC, I added the following to my masks file:

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 5:47 pm Post subject:

If you are going ~arch, then you must use baselayout 2.x and also use the latest GCC.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:24 pm Post subject:

Shining Arcanine,

You can't cross a crevasse in two small jumps. Just go for arch~

If you have plenty of disk space, turn on FEATURES="binpackage" to keep copies of all the binaries you build.
This allows you to use emerge -K =<package/atom>-<ver> to downgrade very quickly when you do have an issue.

Also, never update when you may need your system in a hurry.
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Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

Okay, thanks for the advice. I will emerge the packages I masked after the current emerge finishes running and then follow the upgrade guide, which is something I had hoped to avoid doing.

Thanks for the advice on FEATURES="binpackage".

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

I have an update. My virtual machine is still compiling, but since I thought I caught most of the errors, I decided to go ahead with the upgrades on my laptop. It had relatively few issues compared to the virtual machine (one package refused to compile initially). Right now I have almost everything compiled except open office and dev-python/PyQt4-4.7, which is the one package that refused to compile initially, but is now compiling. Ironically, my virtual machine, despite having a processor that has higher instruction level parallelism, more cores and a higher clock speed than my laptop's processor, is still compiling, which I am going to blame on virtualization overhead.

I took the liberty of upgrading my kernel from gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r9 to gentoo-sources-2.6.31-r10 (which is a huge upgrade, I know

) and so far, the system boot seems faster. A package that did not work before (lm_sensors) now works. I am leaving open office's compilation later, as portage wants to re-compile it because I changed LINGUAS while I was upgrading things and I would rather run open office's long compilation when I am sleeping.

Anyway, thankyou everyone for all of your advice. My system now feels much better than it was before and I am really happy with it.

Shining Arcanine · Veteran Joined: 24 Sep 2009 Posts: 1110

A quick question. Does anyone know what purpose the rootfs and rc-svcdir file systems serve? My laptop now has two extra filesystems that were not mounted previously. I do not see them in fstab, so I am wondering what put them there. I assume that it has something to do with the OpenRC/Baselayout-2 upgrade.

d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 5:03 am Post subject:

In fact, they are part of OpenRc and Baselayout 2.0.

There actually a thread about that on the forum.
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regomodo · Guru Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 445

I've borked my systems too many times with ~arch so now I keyword packages.

I use folder package.keywords/ convention(?) and use a custom script for keywording. It makes it a lot quicker than manually adding each line. Also, I keep all kde keywords in package.keywords/kde.

Mike Hunt · Watchman Joined: 19 Jul 2009 Posts: 5287

Just for the record, I think that is (according to man make.conf): FEATURES="buildpkg" or EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--buildpkg"

d2_racing · Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 5:15 pm Post subject:

So, this FEATURES="binpackage" doesn't exist right ?
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Mike Hunt · Watchman Joined: 19 Jul 2009 Posts: 5287

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 9:54 pm Post subject:

Oops, sorry

Mike Hunt · Watchman Joined: 19 Jul 2009 Posts: 5287

No problemo dude.

d2_racing · Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 12:43 pm Post subject:

So it's :

FEATURES="buildpkg" inside your /etc/make.conf
and this allows you to use emerge -K =<package/atom>-<ver> to downgrade very quickly when you do have an issue.
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jgpallack · n00b Joined: 21 Nov 2007 Posts: 33

Mike Hunt · Watchman Joined: 19 Jul 2009 Posts: 5287

d2_racing · Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 12:45 pm Post subject:

Is there a way to tell portage that we want only one category of packages that we want to create a bin package ?

You may run out of space if you don't clean up your /usr/portage directory

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