What effect, if any, does this have on emerge sync ?

Probably none. This only speeds up the execution of the python code in /usr/bin/emerge - 'emerge sync' farms everything out to rsync, so you will probably see no improvement in that department. I find it speeds up dependency calculations and ...

"export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups" will stop bash from caching duplicate lines.

Well, I suppose YMMV :)

I've been using it for a day on an ~x86 and a x86 system, and have had no problems.

I don't know the first thing about python, but I added it right after the initial import, so my /usr/bin/emerge looks like this (from the top):

#!/usr/bin/python -O
# Copyright 1999-2003 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /home ...

This tip was on the gentoo-user list a day or so ago; credit goes to "Gregory P. Smith".

I was recently playing with psyco (the x86 jit-like compiler for python)
i figured i'd try out emerge with it to see what effect it had.

emerge is largely IO bound so for a first run to load the buffer cache ...

There's a program called deltup in portage that is suppose to add this functionality to portage (but automated), however it doesn't seem to ever have gotten off the ground.

I assume it's on the first CD. As I recall, you still need to set options in /etc/conf.d/net manually - it's just there to help you get up and running.

As root, do a 'nano -w /etc/conf.d/net' and adjust the options as you need to. If you can use DHCP with the card, then you have all the drivers in the right places. Net-setup probably is an install-cd-thing only.

It doesn't look like you've started up your internet. I'm assuming you have a regular network card and you have the proper drivers for the kernel. As root, type '/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start' - hopefully that'll get you on the net. If it does, type 'rc-update add net.eth0 default' to have it start ...

Open up a terminal or console as root (or as your user and then type 'su -') and type in 'ifconfig'.

Okee... well, I assume you've got your ethernet card set to DHCP and it's activated on boot. What's the output of 'ifconfig'?

Perhaps you need to set the gateway variable in /etc/conf.d/net to the IP address of your router.

Are you in the cron group?

'acroread' can indeed fill out web-based forms, but the other Linux viewers cannot.

Check out the 'rfb' package. It has the x0rfbserver, which will forward a specific X display to a VNC connection. It's proably the best you're going to get, outside of ratpoison.

Also have a look at uptimed.

I believe the extensions are installed into /usr/lib/mozilla-*

I just deleted them and reinstalled, but had packages available :)

Right before you stopped being able to use Mozilla(-Firebird) as a normal user, did you install any extensions system-wide? I had the problem of installing a certain extension as root and then not being able to start as a user. When I deleted that extension, the problems stopped and everything ...

OpenMosix is overkill; just set up distcc by emerging it, adding it to your FEATURES in /etc/make.conf, and adding the hosts in your /etc/make.conf under the variable DISTCC_HOSTS. Try to use the same versions of software, but especially gcc and distcc.

No, you ought to keep them. I don't know why, either, but apparently they're there for a reason. I'm running 2.4.21 and I still have the 2.4.19 ones installed.

'httpd' is an emacs package, not apache.

Copy your old .config (in, say, /usr/src/linux-2.4.19) to the new kernel directory (say, /usr/src/linux or /usr/src/linux-2.4.20). Do a `make oldconfig`. It'll ask you questions only about new features in the kernel, and will keep other values the same.

Wow, made my day here. I used to play to original mac game years back, and hassled the developers at the time for a Windows version. :)

Tom

I ought to add that now that I've been with Escape Velocity: Nova for a while in Linux and in Windows, it definitly loses speed in Linux - I was getting ...

Escape Velocity: Nova for Windows has just been release by Ambrosia Software. It's shareware, and it works wonderfully under WineX. I tested it with WineX-3.0 and needed to install the latest Quicktime, which also went without a hitch. The sound isn't perfect, but will do.

I had a similar problem a while back - grabbing from the LAN was quicker than grabbing from the hard drive - but just including every motherboard in the IDE section of my kernel and using hdparm did the trick - guess that won't help you. I have heard that 2.4.21 boasts signifigant IDE performance ...