[SOLVED] Portage Wants To Unmerge LVM2?

sk3l · Last edited by sk3l on Sat Aug 03, 2013 10:57 am; edited 1 time in total

I use LVM, and I'm not sure why portage thinks it's OK to remove this package? I just sync'd and emerge @world this morning. LVM2 isn't in my @world set, nor do I believe it should be, as per the wiki. So is there some other dependency that keeps it from being unmerged from my system that has been invalidated? I see that a new version of udisks was merged, and that has a dependency on LVM2, however, that is via the cryptsetup USE flag, which I do not deploy.

Thanks,
-sk3l

eccerr0r · Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:46 pm Post subject:

I don't seem to have lvm in world either but it seemingly looks like it should, if you are using logical volumes. http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/LVM

However it's not unmerging lvm2 for me during depclean because I have several other packages that depend on lvm2 directly though some really needed it for device-mapper... Currently I'm still using udev-204 and sys-fs/lvm2-2.02.97-r1 ... (cryptsetup, libvirt, parted, and udisks are depending on lvm2 - probably only for device-mapper).

Bumping in case someone has some more insight. I think udev should have device-mapper tools but lvm2 should be something else...
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steveL · Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:50 am Post subject:

I've always had sys-fs/lvm2 in world, because I know my system needs it.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

It would make very little sense for portage to require you to have lvm. So from that angle it makes sense depclean wants to remove it. While it may seem strange to add system tools to your world file, it does make sense. @system includes only what is required for everyone. That means init system, some type of /dev, etc. Not everyone wants or needs lvm, why should it be included? Portage also isn't in the habit of probing your system to see what is needed by not protected from depclean. Programs are like a 3 year old child. You have to tell it exactly what you want otherwise strange things happen.

Just a casual observation, but the type of requiring things "just in case" like putting lvm in system leads to software like systemd or Ubuntu. It has all the features and security holes weather you want them or not.
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Goverp · Veteran Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 1992

FWIW, I found that udisks was dragging in a selection of tools (cyptsetup, LVM etc) that I wasn't using. (See sys-fs/udisks bloat for details.)

I cured it by changes to USE flags, so maybe there's been a profile change that's done the same. As a result, you'd need to explicitly put these tools into world, assuming nothing else you ran needed them
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sk3l · Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 10:54 am Post subject:

Great points all, you more or less bonked me over the head with the same realization that dawned on me last night.

"Wait a sec, nowhere in the wiki was I instructed to emerge lvm2 with oneshot (-1), so of course it should go in the world set!"

So naturally, adding lvm2 to @world prevents portage from trying to dependency clean it.

However, I am still wondering about a couple of things. Firstly, can't see how I wouldn't have allowed lvm2 to *not* be placed in world when I initially installed, if I was following along with the wiki. I would have explicitly had to exclude it via -1, who knows, maybe I was naive enough to do that when I first started with Gentoo. Also, I have been merrily --depcleaning for some time now with the status quo, and never has lvm2 and its associated dependencies been included in the list of packages to cleanse. I also see cryptsetup, which I don't use, in the --depclean list, and I know that there are interdependcies involving lvm2, udisks, and cryptsetup, so presumably something about that relationship recently changed.

So a few learnings to be gleaned from this for the n00b-ish like myself:

1) always -p (practice) along with --depclean and thoroughly scrutinize everything that will be removed, and try to understand if it is or is not appropriate for your system.
2) Understand that everything emerge'd will implicitly go into @world unless you tell portage not to add it (-1).
3) R(and fully understand!)TFM.

Arkhelion · Apprentice Joined: 07 Sep 2010 Posts: 151 Location: France

I personnally keep it outside world but I do have "sys-boot/grub device-mapper" in /etc/portage/package.use that pulls it.
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eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2013 8:52 pm Post subject:

There was this other thread about cleaning up packages. Dependencies can change over time - my suggestion is for people to put this in world and not make it into a dependency -

Just in case you miss an inadvertent depclean, you don't want to kill your box. lvm should belong to world if your disks require lvm to access (but if you're using lvm just for device mapper stuff, then don't put it in world).

I don't know why I don't have lvm in world (as I am using LVM on my disks), but it will be there very shortly...
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