fresh gentoo instructions

[serrs]

After a year of getting stale, I decided to bite the bullet and do the big upgrade. I made the mistake of not reading about udev here in the forums and found out the hard way. Good thing I had just made full backups off-line.

I had enough of a struggle that I documented it where it could almost be a shell script.

Hope this help someone:

(I had to obscure the URLs to post.)

cat > /etc/make.conf << EOF
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -mtune=pentium4 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j1"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ \
 http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/"
USE="-alsa -cups -gnome -gtk -gtk2 -kde -oss -qt -sdl -ipv6"
EOF

cat > /etc/portage/package.keywords << EOF
=sys-apps/baselayout-2.0.1
=sys-apps/openrc-0.6.0-r1
EOF

cat > /etc/portage/package.mask << EOF
>=sys-fs/udev-142
EOF

wget http://gentoo.osuosl.org/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
mv -f /usr/portage /usr/portage.old
tar -xjpf portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /usr

# select default/linux/x86/10.0
eselect profile set 1

# after we emerge screen we can keep bandwidth down by
# running the rest in screen
emerge screen gentoolkit

#emerge -vp portage
emerge --unmerge app-admin/eselect-news
emerge portage
emerge --unmerge sys-fs/e2fsprogs
emerge openrc baselayout e2fsprogs udev
etc-update
# -5

emerge --unmerge sys-apps/man-pages

emerge -uDN world
etc-update
# keep most of /etc/inittab, most others can be replaced

revdep-rebuild -p
emerge -p --depclean
emerge --depclean
gcc-config -l
gcc-config i686-pc-linux-gnu-4.3.4
source /etc/profile

revdep-rebuild -p
revdep-rebuild
# rebuilds perl and python

emerge -ev system
emerge -ev world

VPSLINK: It would be nice to have a newer kernel.

[DanL@VPSLink]

VPSLINK: It would be nice to have a newer kernel.

Duly noted - our primary concern with kernel upgrades (which are also effectively our virtualization platform upgrades) is stability so, as you've noted, we are due for an upgrade to support the latest distribution releases.

We should have a platform upgrade slated in the next 2-3 months and you can expect announcements by e-mail and at the VPSLink Blog once upgrades are scheduled.

[aarrgard]

Getting "touch....no such file or directory" when emerging...

Fix:

mask coreutils
echo ">=sys-apps/coreutils-8.6" >> /etc/portage/package.mask

install old coreutils 8.5(replace ___with ://)
cd /root
wget http___tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux/x86/sys-apps/coreutils-8.5.tbz2
cd /
tar -xvf /root/coreutils-8.5.tbz2

emerge coreutil again...
emerge coreutils

emerge should be working again...

[dev]

Duly noted - our primary concern with kernel upgrades (which are also effectively our virtualization platform upgrades) is stability so, as you've noted, we are due for an upgrade to support the latest distribution releases.

We should have a platform upgrade slated in the next 2-3 months and you can expect announcements by e-mail and at the VPSLink Blog once upgrades are scheduled.

Dan,

That's good to hear. Trust me, I do appreciate that VPSLink isn't upgrading kernels every week, however, the kernel on the VPSLink boxes are 2.6.18 and a normal Gentoo install is currently at 2.6.34/35 (depending on 32-bit/64-bit).

Wouldn't be so much of a problem except that upgrading certain packages renders the system unbootable and even unfixable from the 'Java console'. So updating anything in the Gentoo world is a minefield.

Right now I have the following blocked for updates because of the old kernel:
sys-fs/udev
sys-apps/baselayout
sys-apps/openrc
sys-apps/sysvinit
>sys-apps/coreutils-8.5

I don't suppose that VPSLink has a gentoo person that could maybe post a "Don't upgrade these packages" list or something similar?

[Cwewmpz]

Hello Dev.

I think Dan is no longer employed at vpslink since the transition therefore he may not respond. I understand your frustration however as a centos user, kernel 2.6.18 is the current kernel. Previously I believe vpslink policy was only maintain the stable xensource kernel which is 2.6.18.

To answer your question you can PM matt@vpslink about your situation however from recent announcement concerning ubuntu 10 availability... I believe a new kernel is planned as it is needed to support ubuntu so you may get your wish soon. On gentoo upgrade path that is another issue...

[dev]

Hello Dev.

I think Dan is no longer employed at vpslink since the transition therefore he may not respond.

Thanks.

To answer your question you can PM matt@vpslink about your situation however from recent announcement concerning ubuntu 10 availability... I believe a new kernel is planned as it is needed to support ubuntu so you may get your wish soon. On gentoo upgrade path that is another issue...

I just think it might be neat to have a list of known issues or something posted so that I can find out that update blah-0.00 will no work versus figuring it out after I've compiled the package and it has installed and either breaks the build process (ie. coreutils) or renders the system unbootable (ie. udev).

I usually post the ones I find in hopes that someone might find it useful.

Good to hear a new kernel is coming....

[Matt@VPSLink]

It may be a while before a new kernel is rolled out. A new kernel involves considerable changes from provisioning, template design, server build, etc which will all need to be tested.

[ennui]

I had upgraded my Gentoo system beyond what was supported by the Xen kernel currently being offered by VPSLink. I did not want to re-image my container, so to downgrade everything back to acceptable versions, I created a Portage overlay in /usr/local/portage. For those of you who may also find yourselves in this situation, I am posting the overlay I created here on a GitHub account.

(https)github.com/ennui93/VPSLinkGentoo/

Note that this does not represent a complete solution to the problem. You will most likely encounter issues emerging some of these ebuilds, configuring your system, manually download distfiles, and be required to emerge other versions of packages. However, leveraging this overlay may help you to get underway, so I share it in the hopes that others using Gentoo on VPSLink may find it useful.

You can find a quick walkthrough on configuring a Portage overlay from GitHub at funtoo.org/Git_local_overlay.

Also, here are some relevant portions from a few Portage config files on my system.

/etc/portage/package.mask:

#VPSLink needs to update kernel before any of the below can be emerged
>sys-apps/openrc-0.6.0-r1
>=sys-fs/udev-142
>=virtual/udev-142
>=sys-apps/coreutils-8.7
>sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.18
>sys-apps/sysvinit-2.86-r13
>sys-apps/baselayout-2.0.1

/etc/portage/package.keywords

=sys-fs/udev-141-r1 ~x86
=virtual/udev-141-r1 ~x86
=sys-apps/openrc-0.6.0-r1 ~x86
=sys-apps/sysvinit-2.86-r12 ~x86

Omitting URL tags due to forum software requiring 15 or more posts.

[Cwewmpz]

wow... what? what version of gentoo did you upgrade to from what version?
vpslink onlys has 2011 and 8.12 images so it will be helpful to know.

thanks all the same.

[ennui]

wow... what? what version of gentoo did you upgrade to from what version?
vpslink onlys has 2011 and 8.12 images so it will be helpful to know.

thanks all the same.

I'm not certain which image was used for deployment. This VPS was originally configured in 2008, so would have used whatever image was available at the time -- that seems to coincide with about 8.12. I have been emerging updates and rebuilding world once every so often, effectively bringing the system to the latest version; and unaware, until a couple months ago, that the latest udev packages had interoperability issues with the 2.6.18 kernel.

-N