Nov
12
2005

Where For Art Thou Ebuild?

Saturday, November 12, 2005 - 03:10:38 pm
(Posted Under: Linux Linux, Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux)
One annoying thing with Gentoo (or moreso Portage) is the death of ebuilds - that is, that after time ebuilds disappear out of portage.

Y'know, if I bork my kernel sources, I might just want to remerge them. Sure, the 2.6.8 kernel is reasonably old, but since it's the kernel I've got installed, as crazy as it might be [wink], I might just want to remerge it.

It wasn't a huge problem, since I backup portage each time I do an emerge sync (which in itself is kinda a pain in the ass), for this exact reason. A technique I've always employeed on my server, since about this time last year - when I was setting up a server at work, and had to replicate the environment we'd been using, and had trouble finding an ebuild for the right version of mod_ssl, as it was no longer in portage. I ended up one after searching the web for about an hour. Since then I've religiously backup portage before doing emerge sync's. (And hence is why I emerge sync fairly infrequently).

What portage does (removing old ebuilds) isn't inherently wrong, because admitadly never removing ebuilds would result in a huge amount of files in /usr/portage. Of course, ebuilds are quite small in size, but sure, you'd end up with a crap load of files. However, it's kinda crazy, and certainly, annoying that ebuilds for packages that are installed disappear. Especially for things that you're likely to bork, like kernel sources. [wink]

The solution, or the one I use anyway, is to backup portage (excluding distfiles/) each time I sync, and whenever I need an old ebuild, extract it and dump it into /usr/local/portage, which I've set up as a portage overlay. At least this way, you only have to do it once. Not that it's hard, or that time consuming, but it can be a pain to find the ebuild, set up the directory, copy the required files, and then generate a digest.

Anyways, I'm just bitchin' like a...bitch. [smile] I think that's the only minor annoyance I have with Gentoo.

Furthermore, last night I was trying to add some iptables modules to the 2.6.8 kernel - which unfortantely didn't work to well. h323_conntrack, which worked, however I don't seem to be able to get it to actually work. And pptp_conntrack, which I coudln't get to patch properly, nor find a patch-o-matic version that would patch properly with gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.8. I did notice last week when the 2.6.14 kernel was released, pptp_conntrack was merged into the mainline kernel. I probably should just upgrade my kernel. But 2.6.8 has been good to me, and it means I'd have to reboot. [wink]
Now Playing: Scott Johnson & Troy Dixon - Stop! (Live - Laruel Canyon CD Release)

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