Why does Portage download masked / uninstallable packages?

[davidbryant]

I've been using Gentoo Linux for almost a year. I've been using openSUSE Linux since 2003, but didn't get into Gentoo until recently. One of the problems I see is with disk space. Gentoo tends to gobble up a lot of space with its cache of source code files. The first time I installed Gentoo on my hard drive I was running low on space within two weeks. So I doubled the size of my root partition (I put /home in its own separate partition) and started over. I'm doing OK on disk space now -- both partitions are about 60% free space.

I've been a little unhappy with "eclean". It seems to get stuck in an endless loop sometimes, and then I have to kill it. It also seems to have some trouble identifying all the redundant source code tarballs. That's not real surprising. There are a dizzying variety of naming conventions in use, apparently. Trying to decide which patches go with which version level is sometimes pretty hard to do.

Anyway, I have devised a procedure to keep /var/cache/distfiles pretty compact. Today I tested my procedure. I used a terminal command to make a text file list of all the files in /var/cache/distfiles, loaded the list into a spreadsheet, then used some simple function calls to locate the embedded hyphens in each name, and to compare the parts of each name preceding the rightmost hyphen to the previous item in the sorted list, and also to the next item, using a logical OR. So I ended up with a bunch of "TRUE" and "FALSE" flags, which whittled the list of possible duplicates from ~3,700 to 50 or 60.

Anyway, after I had combed through that residue I was left with two packages that should not be in my system, as far as I can tell.

[asturm]

Tarballs are not packages. Packages do not necessarily relate to a single tarball. Source tarballs and their naming conventions are derived from upstreams, not some repackaged binary download that you get from opensuse, so unless they collide with our QA rules this is what you get in your distfiles directory.

In case of the thin-provisioning-tools tarballs, if you have been using sys-kernel/genkernel, this package is pulling multiple source tarballs from different projects, that being one of them.

4.2.1-r1 is the latest stable version:

[Phoenix591]

Glibc pulls down that gcc tarball if the multilib useflag is enabled

[davidbryant]

[davidbryant]

[Whissi]

[davidbryant]

Thank you, Whissi. I'm not complaining. Just trying to understand. The only reasion I use genkernel at all is to build an initramfs file when I upfate the kernel. It was easier than using "dracut" from the git-go. I guess I ought to figure out how to use dracut every time.
_________________
David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas

[NeddySeagoon]

davidbryant,

You can also build a lean mean kernel agnostic initrd by hand and forget it.
My 2009 initrd still works but I've forgotten how to do it again.

The only reason that the initrd needs to be made every kernel it because it contains kernel modules that are required to mount the root filesystem.
If the initrd is userspace tools only and the kernel has all the bits needed built in, it will just work.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[davidbryant]

[NeddySeagoon]

davidbryant,

Its unlikely you want kernel ntfs support. It used to destroy ntfs filesystem on writes.
That was 'fixed' by limiting write support to modifying existing files without changing the file size.

For full ntfs support use FUSE and ntfs3g. Kernel ntfs is OK for read only. Its also safe to have both.