help with emerging Xorg-server etc

[Tony0945]

Besides specific versions such as your package.use, mine also has versionless entries such as:

[greyspoke]

[mikefot]

Hello again,

I have been looking at the web pages on kernel configuration a bit more.

Looking here:

http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Kernel/Configuration#Build

It suggests that after manually optimising the configuration it has to be compiled again.

I assume I will need to do that here.

There is a cryptic bit at the end which seems to say that the symlink that points to current kernel executable I have will automatically sniff out the new kernel and point to it like a gun dog, without me having to do a whole lot once it is compiled....

I am a bit concerned that to make sure the compiler goes for the modified version of the source (or however the changes are added to it) and not the old configuration and just recompile that etc.

Comments appreciated.

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[Tony0945]

That's why I run

[mikefot]

Dear Tony,

Many thanks for the input again. I am a correct in interpeting what you say to mean that if you would choose to do a brand new installation on a new box, then you would start off with the kernel supplied on the installation CD (as I did ) and then when it comes to the part where you have to install your own kernel and compile it, you would use a config file that contained the elements needed to make e.g. xorg-server and your graphics cards work etc right then, and using your script you would get genkernel to produce a properly configured kernel the first time you used it and in practice you could install e.g. xorg-server and say gnome or xfce and they would work properly, and you would not need to recompile the kernel and reset all these options correctly again until Linus Torvalds sends us all a new kernel version and we could not do an emerge update properly without it......?

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[NeddySeagoon]

Tony0945,

I like my emerge --info output to provide useful information and I find a lot of entries in package.use difficult to keep track of.
I use both, or all three even.

Any USE flag that I want to affect all my installed packages goes in make.conf - even if it applies only to a single package.
When I'm not sure, I test with

[Tony0945]

Mike, you have the gist of it. One point, if you run genkernel without the --kernel-config= you will always start with either the default config flags or the flags from the last kernel you built, I forget which. In my method you always start with the config flags of the kernel currently running, i.e. one known to work, which may not be the one you last built. I try to sync the portage ebuilds at least once a week. I have one central machine for that. I have five computers total so I use one as a local server. That's sort of an advanced technique you can read about on the wiki. I use cron to run the sync a little after midnight on Monday morning as there tends to be a burst of activity on weekends. When a new kernel is found, I select it with eselect then run my script. In between, I often tinker with the kernel trying for more efficiency.
Right now, I'm having a slow boot so I tried taking out some more unneeded drivers. Didn't help. Now I'm rebuilding that kernel with SLUB instead of SLAB because I read on the internet that would help. As I suggested above, I added the local suffix SLUB to the kernel name with menuconfig. If the result is horrible or unbootable I can always reboot with my previous kernel. I'm running the ~amd64 kernel as I noticed that they are always marked as stable by Linus and that's good enough for me. Some time in the past there was a notice from Gentoo to stop using a particular kernel that had been marked as stable because a bug that could trash files was found. So now I keep the latest unstable and the latest stable kernels in /boot as a minimum. Every so often I clean house. Did so yesterday, I kept the three kernels that are still in the tree and unmerged and destroyed the source files from the others.

Besides the install CD another source is Pappy's seeds, http://kernel-seeds.org/, but it's a bit behind on versions. It's well worth reading, however, for the comments on individual config flags.

Don't know for sure how to advise you, because I love to tinker with my boxes, but I firmly maintain at least monthly updates. I once upgraded a four year old installation including going from 2 series kernel to 3 series kernel, a major gnome upgrade, and replacement of major obsolete packages. It would have been better to re-install. Even on my weekly updates, some snafu can mess you up. But in the next week, someone on the forum will have a fix. That's why I like to read the forum and thereby saw your post.

Gentoo is all about choices. Very little is carved in stone. Much different from RedHat or Ubuntu Welcome!

[Tony0945]

Neddy, thanks for the comments. I have WAY too many use flags in make.conf, 63 in fact. That's actually pared down by keeping only those flags that affect two or more packages. You are correct that -systemd isn't needed anymore. I think it was a relic of the time that I was switching from Gnome to Mate. I also have -gnome -kde -policykit and -consolekit although policykit is on the system because one package (udisks ?) requires it. Kaffeine also brought in large chunks of kde, but if I replace kaffeine, it will all go away. Someday, I have to sit down and look at which flags will have what effect by the method you suggest. I still have the fortran flag for gcc although I haven't written any fortran for more than thirty years and am unlikely to in the future although I do have some math routines on a CD somewhere. Probably best to dump the flag and quit building fortran support into gcc until I actually decide to write some fortran again.

[Tony0945]

Neddy, used your method and found out that, as suspected, the fortran flag only affects gcc. Moreover, "equery u gcc" shows that it is on by default. Only 62 flags now.

[NeddySeagoon]

Tony0945,

USE=fortran is on as some math libraries are written in fortran. They work well, are mature and debugged, so there is no point in rewrititng them.
If you don't use these libraries, you won't miss fortran support.

world and @world are equivelent.

Before sets were introduced in portage-2.2 there was only world. World is really a set - its all the packages you have explicitly installed.
To keep the set and package namespaces separate, sets are denoted with a @. hence @world.
For backwards compatibility, portage accepts world too. It only works as there is no package named world yet.

A set is any list of packages (like @world). If you want to write a set called fedora20 then

[steveL]

[mikefot]

Dear All,

I tried to install xorg again. I first modified the make.conf file with the suggestions made by Tony and Selenia.

My make.conf file now looks like this:

[NeddySeagoon]

mikefot,

You are correct about the kernel

[mikefot]

Many thanks for the prompt response.

I realise that I forgot to add something here...

When I said I had a package.use file that looked like this:

[NeddySeagoon]

mikefot,

[mikefot]

Hello again,

I have pasted the entire genkernel log file here:

http://pastebin.com/rrr0Bw7u

I also ran the uname -a command:

The output was :

Linux haywire 3.14.14-gentoo #1 SMP Mon Oct 20 21:33:24 BST 2014 x86_64 AMD A4-3400 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

Seems I am still using the old kernel.

I will see if I can find a config.gz file or whatever it is that lists the old and new kernel configurations.

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[Tony0945]

Are you using a separate \boot partition? If you are and it's not mounted when you run genkernel, it will put the generated kernel files in \boot on your main partition not your (unmounted) boot partition.

Run

[Tony0945]

I forgot another possible error, post the result of

[mikefot]

Dear Tony,

I did mount | grep boot as you suggested and sure enough - there was nothing there.....

So then I did mount /boot followed by mount | grep boot again as you advised, and the output was

[mikefot]

Hello once again,

I have just realised that the processor I have in my box here, the amd a4-3400 is in fact a dual core type...........

Thus I think the makeopts parameter should have been -j3 not -j2...........

It is actually an APU and has onboard Radeon graphics.

I bought a separate asus engt 430 nvidia graphics card and installed it alongside it.

So now I think the kernel needs to be recompiled to add both the evdev support and the correct makeopts setting; I suspect some other things will be found that need fixing as well.

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[steveL]

[Tony0945]

I think this will work

[mikefot]

Hi, thanks to you both.....

I have two hard drives on my machine.

The first one has Gentoo (installed first) in around 250 GB (following the Gentoo handbook instructions using parted) and around 70GB was left free. After installing Gentoo to the reboot I then installed Ubuntu in the remaining free space.

The second drive has Windows 7 on it (around 60GB) and Debian Jessie next to it (140GB or so).

The monitor resolution is 2560 x 1080@ 60Hz refresh rate. I need to adjust xrandr in Debian and Ubuntu creating a new mode - the highest available one is currently is 1200 x 1080 I think.

If I resurrect the new kernel, I can test it and see what it does.

Since the evdev support is not turned on in then it will have to be superseded with a new better kernel, but it might show that some of the changes I made actually worked which is a help at this stage...

If I want to check the configuration of it (and the old kernel) as Ned of Wales suggested, do I have to find some config.gz file and get the settings I used from there?

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[mikefot]

PS

Why would Iwant to copy anything to the mnt/temp directory here?

Regards

Michael Fothergill

[mikefot]

PS

Why would Iwant to copy anything to the mnt/temp directory here?

Regards

Michael Fothergill