Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
Gnome 3.8 without systemd
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours
View posts from last 7 days

 
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Desktop Environments
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
james.h.bates
n00b
n00b


Joined: 11 Jul 2013
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 1:37 am    Post subject: Gnome 3.8 without systemd Reply with quote

I'm a stubborn bloke, and not a huge fan of systemd (looks too much like Mac OSX's "launchd" for comfort, and there are serious doubts about Kay Sievers and Lennart Poettering, the maintainers of the project. In fact they are responsible for Gentoo's recent fork of udev, among others).

So I tried out some things. It turns out that with the latest portage tree, you are indeed forced to include the "systemd" use flag, which *compiles* in support for systemd everywhere. However I could run a gnome 3.8 desktop session just fine without migrating my startup to systemd (i.e. I still using good ol' openrc). gdm however doesn't work: it compiles and runs, but no users are avaialbel to log in as. I therefore use another login manager (slim), and that allows me to start a gnome session.

There is absolutely no policykit support in this setup, so I cannot mount cds, connect to wifi networks or do anything at all, unless I am actually logged in as root.


Being unsatisfied with this drawback, I delved a bit further. By setting this in /etc/portage/package.mask:
Code:
>gnome-base/gdm-3.8.0
>gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3
>gnome-base/gnome-shell-3.8.3-r1


and making sure the relevant (older) ebuilds are avialable to portage (I got them from previous portage snapshots and stuck them in my personal /usr/local/portage overlay), I can actually compile the whole lot *without* the "systemd" use flag. With this setup everything works just perfectly. policykit is back, I can mount USB drives, connect to wifi, play sound, change backlight strength, and I can log in from gdm again. I can *even* suspend my laptop on lid close, or from the user menu using this trick: http://terrageek.blogspot.de/2013/04/get-back-suspend-option-for-gentoo.html

So I hope this gives back some courage to some of those gentoo-ers who like things just as they were, and don't see a need to revolutionize boot systems just to upgrade a desktop shell ;)


Last edited by james.h.bates on Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
migle
n00b
n00b


Joined: 08 Aug 2013
Posts: 1
Location: Alcochete

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 10:36 am    Post subject: Re: Gnome 3.8 without systemd Reply with quote

Right here, three more masks are required. I have an up-to-date ports tree, no gnome-related overlays (I hope they keep the 3.6 ebuilds for a while), and I accept ~amd64 globally --- used to be selective but it gave me too much work and I completely lost faith in the criteria of stability of Gentoo maintainers.

I have:

Code:

>=gnome-base/gdm-3.8
>=gnome-base/gnome-3.8
>=gnome-base/gnome-control-center-3.8
>=gnome-base/gnome-core-apps-3.8
>=gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8
>=gnome-base/gnome-shell-3.8


It's quite a bit but it still is less than what I had previously (copied from the global package mask), and both gnome and gnome-core-apps are just meta packages.
Of course, there is nothing to miss from gnome-control-center-3.8, it's the worst part of gnome 3 where they chose to imitate Mac OS X instead of inovating as they did so well in the gnome-shell (making the comercial OSes tremble, IMO).

Whenever they pick up something from Mac OS X, as if it were such a good DE, I feel they are turning Free Software into Cheap Software --- it almost looks the same as the Mac, but we'll only charge you for support. I wonder if their needs are compatible with the long term interest of the community (even though they contribute a lot).

As for Lennart Poettering, I wish he would go back and give pulseaudio a finish. After so many years, so many parts of it still crash so much.

Greetings,
_________________
--
Miguel
PGP A006A14C
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ChrisJumper
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 12 Mar 2005
Posts: 2389
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you very much james.h.bates!

Home from holiday and thought it would a good idea to update my gentoo systems. What a mess! There have to be a warning that i break the system by updating to gnome 3.8 if i not want to install systemd either.

Your maskings should be in portage by default with a notice when the people are searching why.. I am not really angry, but i'm upset. About the design by the gnome-developer that made these packages incompatible like this, or the gentoo-packet-managers that can't implement the constraints for those packages into portage.

Of cause its my fault as user to do such silly things, but it would be nice when portage not permit a mixing of those packages. Like ship gnome 3.8 in a whole or not.

I know that its not the job of the packed managers, because they can't test all the constellations of those gnome-packages. But hey as community it "would" be nice if we could even chat about that issues or have "unstable wiki" entry's about "installing gnome 3.6", "migrate to gnome 3.8" and so on. One single place where we could chat about that or describe or vote about working installations/howtos...

The last time i used the unstable gnome 3.6, because it was the only installation where i can use multi-user-switching and gnome. I thought if i use these unstable packages, this is the "easy way" instead of mixing packages from gnome 3.4 and 3.6. I thought the package managers just release full steps into portage so... its not important to cap the top Versions.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ChrisJumper
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 12 Mar 2005
Posts: 2389
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Will not work here... :/

Code:
libtool: link: ( cd ".libs" && rm -f "libkeyboard.la" && ln -s "../libkeyboard.la" "libkeyboard.la" )
test_keyboard_ibus_utils-test-keyboard-ibus-utils.o: In function `apply_input_sources_settings':
test-keyboard-ibus-utils.c:(.text+0x1560): undefined reference to `gnome_xkb_info_get_layout_info_for_language'


gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon-3.6.4 fail with gnome_xkb_info_get_layout_info_for_language:

If i looking for that error, some archlinux folks talk about that but i have no solution. On some page, that i can not find now, people say thats an issue with the cups support and i should disable it.. and it will work.

But if i disable the cups useflag, i have to do in other packages too...

Quote:
gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon -cups
gnome-base/gnome-core-apps -cups
gnome-base/gnome-control-center -cups


...when i now try to recompile these packages, systemd is magically pulled in. :/

GDM and launch Gnome 3 over KDM will not work. Problems about gnome-settings-daemon and a unknown symbol "draw background" or something like this.

Keep searching for a solution....
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ChrisJumper
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 12 Mar 2005
Posts: 2389
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, there is no way to use a mix of gnome 3.8 packages and some 3.6 packages to got that working.

James what exactly do you mean with
Quote:
and making sure the relevant (older) ebuilds are avialable to portage (I got them from previous portage snapshots and stuck them in my personal /usr/local/portage overlay), I can actually compile the whole lot *without* the "systemd" use flag.


...?

I just use the actual packages in portage. Now i try to just compile all the 3.6 packages again to got gnome 3.6 working... without success. gdm blocks and i still have some errors in my gnome-shell.

Edit: I blame gnome for that! My Gnome 3.6 installation is still broken, so i migrate the desktop to kde. A shame because i really loved that usage of gnome with its window management over the windows key. I don't know why they focus on systemd. Even if i use KDM for a Login into gnome, my gnome-shell still freeze due to some errors.

I hope they will support a separation in future. As i understood they just use the systemd feature to reboot fast from hibernate... FIN.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
james.h.bates
n00b
n00b


Joined: 11 Jul 2013
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So there seems to be a little bit of confusion; sorry about that; I will try to explain more carefully.

I am running gnome 3.8, not 3.6. I don't have a single 3.6 package installed: everything is gnome 3.8.

Now to get that running without systemd, you can't use all the current portage ebuilds, because some of those require systemd, which is what I am trying to avoid. In particular the current 3.8 ebuilds for gdm, gnome-shell and gnome-settings-daemon contain this requirement.

So what I did, was to get hold of earlier ebuilds for these packages, which are STILL 3.8 versions but did not yet contain the systemd requirements. I put those older ebuild files in my /usr/local/portage tree. In particular, I have these ebuilds (in /usr/local/portage):

gnome-base/gdm/gdm-3.8.0.ebuild
gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3.ebuild
gnome-base/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-3.8.3-r1.ebuild

The package.mask entries make sure that those, and only those ebuilds are used for these 3 packages, and not any of the newer versions from the main /usr/portage tree.

Since these particular ebuilds are no longer in the main portage tree, you must get them from an older portage snapshot (pre 25 July 2013 I think), or you can get them by looking into gentoo CVS's "attic":

http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gdm/?hideattic=0
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/?hideattic=0
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gnome-shell/?hideattic=0

Put those files in local portage overlay, e.g.:

Code:

mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/{gdm,gnome-settings-daemon,gnome-shell}
wget 'http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gdm/gdm-3.8.0.ebuild' \
    -O /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gdm/gdm-3.8.0.ebuild
wget 'http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3.ebuild' \
    -O /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3.ebuild
wget 'http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/gnome-base/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-3.8.3-r1.ebuild' \
    -O /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-3.8.3-r1.ebuild


You should also copy the files/ folder as-is from official portage, e.g.

Code:

cp -r /usr/portage/gnome-base/gdm/files /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gdm
cp -r /usr/portage/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/files /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon
cp -r /usr/portage/gnome-base/gnome-shell/files /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-shell


You could also symlink I imagine.

Finally, build manifests for your local overlay:

Code:

ebuild manifest /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gdm/gdm-3.8.0.ebuild
ebuild manifest /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3.ebuild
ebuild manifest /usr/local/portage/gnome-base/gnome-shell/gnome-shell-3.8.3-r1.ebuild


Now, with the appropriate package.mask set-up, and your local overlay activated in make.conf (PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" or similar), you will build the slightly older, but still gnome 3.8 versions of gdm, gnome-shell and gnome-settings-daemon, when doing an "emerge gnome" and no-one will ask you for systemd ;)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
TomWij
Retired Dev
Retired Dev


Joined: 04 Jul 2012
Posts: 1553

PostPosted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ChrisJumper wrote:
But hey as community it "would" be nice if we could even chat about that issues or have "unstable wiki" entry's about "installing gnome 3.6", "migrate to gnome 3.8" and so on.


The team is preparing a guide for the upcoming stabilization which you can see at http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME/3.8-upgrade-guide

ChrisJumper wrote:
Keep searching for a solution....


There is no reliable solution, unless someone has the resources to do so (as in, a team of developers); until then, setups like the ones discussed in this topic will probably be regarded as unsupported.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mjcoss
n00b
n00b


Joined: 13 Aug 2010
Posts: 12

PostPosted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Want to say thanks to james.h.bates for his post. I had previously had a list I had gotten from somewhere of all the elements for Gnome 3.8, and masked it all out simply because I use Gnome *and* I wanted to keep systemd off my system. Your list is significantly smaller, and after a few bumps in the road, I've now have 3.8 running happily without systemd. Not sure what the real consequences of those differences on those few packages, and I'm sure soon enough it will have issues with some new update but for now it seems stable.

I'm afraid it is probably a loosing battle with keeping systemd out, but for now it appears to be working.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Desktop Environments All times are GMT
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum