When a package is emerged, the archives are stored into /usr/portage/distfiles (cleaning this directory now and then may free up some disk space) but temporary files in the compilation process are located in /var/tmp/portage. Disk access is somewhat slower than memory access, so if you have spare ram memory, this trick is meant for you. Mounting a memory block on the portage temp area will speed up things for you.
For the purpose add the following line to you /etc/fstab file:


none /var/tmp/portage tmpfs size=2048M,nr_inodes=1M 0 0


In this case it’s a 2GB block, but you can suite to your needs. Please be aware that certain packages require HUGE amounts of memory, such as gcc, OpenOffice, etc…

Editor wrapper script, executes ${EDITOR} on file $1.

#!/bin/sh
# Copyright 2009 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the MIT license

# Editor wrapper script, executes ${EDITOR} on file $1.
# We disallow options and multiple file name arguments on purpose, so
# that packages' configure scripts cannot sniff out the type of editor.

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "$0: Exactly one argument required" >&2
exit 1
fi

file=$1
if [ "${file#-}" != "${file}" ]; then
# Argument is supposed to be a file name, not an option
file=./${file}
fi

if [ -z "${EDITOR}" ]; then
# Try to get EDITOR from system profile
EDITOR=$(. /etc/profile &>/dev/null; echo "${EDITOR}")
fi

if [ -z "${EDITOR}" ]; then
echo "$0: The EDITOR variable must be set" >&2
exit 1
fi

exec ${EDITOR} "${file}"

Now we can set our editor with eselect :)


eselect editor list
Available targets for the EDITOR variable:
[1] /bin/nano
[2] /bin/ed
[3] /usr/bin/emacs
[4] /usr/bin/ex
[5] /usr/bin/vi
[ ] (free form)

eselect editor set 5

eselect editor list
Available targets for the EDITOR variable:
[1] /bin/nano
[2] /bin/ed
[3] /usr/bin/emacs
[4] /usr/bin/ex
[5] /usr/bin/vi *
[ ] (free form)

Question
I want to emerge a certain package, let's say x11-base/xorg-drivers,
so I try first "emerge --pretend xorg-drivers" and find it has ~50
various use-flags (some set, some unset). Where can I find their
description? For example "vmmouse", what is this USE flag good for?
Is it something for vmware?

I checked /etc/portage/profiles/use.desc and use.local.desc but
there are not all of them...

Answer
equery u x11-base/xorg-drivers

equery is part of app-portage/gentoolkit in case you don't have it installed. It can do other useful things such as tell you which package installed a file, or show all files installed by a package.

And in the specific case of xorg-drivers those aren't USE flags at all
but driver flags

emerge -av --depclean wants to remove
sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.30-r7 after a world update.

How do I prevent this? I've tried the --deselect and --noreplace switches but that has the opposite effect I'm looking for.

I read this same question earlier this year on the gentoo-user mailing list and got a perfect solution from Mike Kazantsev along with help from Boris Fersing.

Edit (or create) /etc/portage/sets.conf and put this inside:

[kernels]
class = portage.sets.dbapi.OwnerSet
world-candidate = False
files = /usr/src

Then edit/create /var/lib/portage/world_sets and add this line:

@kernels


Now --depclean should never try to remove your kernel packages! It
works great for me.

net-misc/wicd is a nice program to manage your wired and wireless networks. I use wicd to manager my eth0 and wlan0 on my laptops.

openrc 4.3

In /etc/init.d I only have net.lo and my /etc/conf.d/rc has;

RC_PLUG_SERVICES="!net.eth0 !net.wlan0".

openrc 5.2

/etc/rc.conf rc_hotplug="!net.wlan !net.eth0"

by Christian Faulhammer (fauli)

Writing a news item For some time now it is possible to distribute news items to users. The notification is similar to the pending updates in /etc, so users are alerted in a more highlighted manner than by simple elog information that passes by on the screen. To not annoy the user with minor problems, only really important information like a major configuration change in the X component should be announced. As the description in GLEP 42 [1] is quite a lot of text and getting through to the information needed to write a news item is relatively hard, I want to make a summary of the steps to take. No responsibilty though, the GLEP stays the definitive source of wisdom:

1. Choose a correct file name: YYYY-MM-DD-name.lang.txt, where the date is followed by a name (all letters and numbers allowed, plus dash and underscore), the two-letter ISO language code (en for English must be chosen as default) and the file extension txt.

2. Write the news item, which is similar to a RFC-compliant email. Details what is allowed can be found in the appropriate GLEP section . As a note: Exceptions depending on installed packages or activated profiles is possible.

3. Send the news item to the gentoo-dev mailing list and the Gentoo PR team (pr@g.o) 72 hours in advance of commit.

4. Wait for corrections or people who tell you that your news item is not of great importance and should be revoked (can be possible).

5. Crate a detached armored GnuPG signature with gpg --detach-signature --armor YYYY-MM-DD-name.lang.txt

6. Create a directory structure for your item in the Gentoo News repository gentoo-news: YYYY/MM (e.g. 2011/06 for a news item published in June 2011).

7. Add signature and news file to that directory.

8. Commit both

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0042.html

Title: Using default-linux profile is now obsolete
Author: Samuli Suominen
Content-Type: text/plain
Posted: 2009-10-21
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 1.0
Display-If-Profile: default-linux

The profiles in default-linux/ have been deprecated for six weeks.
Users using these profiles are expected to migrate to a new profile
before 2009-12-01, at which point the default-linux/ profiles will be
removed. The new profiles contain up to date configurations and were
adopted because they were easier to maintain. Users can switch to a
new profile using eselect:

# eselect profile list
# eselect profile set

If a machine is not migrated to a new valid profile then emerge will
have very limited functionality.

If you experience problems sending encrypted email;

Please remember to restart gpg-agent if a different version
of the agent is currently used. If you are unsure of the gpg
agent you are using please run 'killall gpg-agent',
and to start a fresh daemon just run 'gpg-agent --daemon'.

In make.conf:

ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"

To unmask all licenses. Or else name the licenses you wish unmasked one by one. In a recent portage-2.2 rc. It masks end user license agreements by default (-@EULA is the syntax)

Another option is to create /etc/portage/package.license and put the
licenses you want to accept in here. The portage man page has a little info
about it.

So if you see something like;

#
!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "games-fps/doom3" have been masked.
#
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
#
- games-fps/doom3-1.3.1304 (masked by: package.mask, DOOM3 license(s))
#
/usr/portage/profiles/package.mask:
#
# Chris Gianelloni (3 Mar 2008)
#
# Masking due to security bug #194607 and security bug #204067
#

#
A copy of the 'DOOM3' license is located at '/usr/portage/licenses/DOOM3'.
#

echo "games-fps/doom3 DOOM3" >> /etc/portage/package.license

Boot Option;
gentoo nox

edit /etc/conf.d/xdm
replace "kdm" with "gdm"

/usr/sbin/x-setup

create root password
passwd

create gentoo user password "gentoo" (may not be needed)

/etc/init.d/xdm start
have fun :)