portage

After a long break, I updated my Gentoo installation (I was more working on Windows, recently – mainly for studying reasons…)

After that, when issueing the usual “revdep-rebuild”, I encountered some errors that turned out to be some dependencies on SDL; the corresponding configure routines warned about something like:

checking for sdl-config... /usr/bin/sdl-config
checking for SDL - version >= 1.2.0... no
*** Could not run SDL test program, checking why...
*** The test program compiled, but did not run. This usually means
*** that the run-time linker is not finding SDL or finding the wrong
*** version of SDL. If it is not finding SDL, you'll need to set your
*** LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, or edit /etc/ld.so.conf to point
*** to the installed location Also, make sure you have run ldconfig if that
*** is required on your system
***
*** If you have an old version installed, it is best to remove it, although
*** you may also be able to get things to work by modifying LD_LIBRARY_PATH
configure: error: *** SDL version 1.2.0 not found!

Apparently, there are different sources to this problem; I found two threads on forums.gentoo.org

When I finally looked into config.log, as indicated, I found out that libaa tried to find a libslang-library that was nonexistent:

/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.1.2/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/bin/ld: warning: libslang-utf8.so.1, needed by /usr/lib/libaa.so.1, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link)

So, re-emerging aalib did the trick.

In the posts I linked above, for others re-emerging libsdl or some other packages helped as well… but the best is to look into config.log, if something like this happens. Will remember this…

Today, I wanted to do a regular update of WORLD on my server – and I ran into this message from portage:

Calculating world dependencies \
!!! Multiple versions within a single package slot have been
!!! pulled into the dependency graph:

('ebuild', '/', 'app-crypt/gnupg-1.4.7-r1', 'merge') pulled in by
('installed', '/', 'mail-client/squirrelmail-1.4.10a-r2', 'nomerge')

('ebuild', '/', 'app-crypt/gnupg-2.0.7', 'merge') pulled in by
('installed', '/', 'mail-filter/spamassassin-3.2.1-r1', 'nomerge')

It may be possible to solve this problem by using package.mask to
prevent one of those packages from being selected. However, it is also
possible that conflicting dependencies exist such that they are
impossible to satisfy simultaneously. If such a conflict exists in the
dependencies of two different packages, then those packages can not be
installed simultaneously.

For more information, see MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge man page
or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

I think it is a common problem with gnupg at the moment; I found various posts, though none of them seemed to refer on squirrelmail AND spamassassin at the same time. When searching bugs.gentoo.org, I could found similar entries as well, but no one referring to this particular combination.

I therefore unmasked squirrelmail (by entering mail-client/squirrelmail ~x86 in /etc/portage/package.keywords), usually, the webapps in unstable are quite usable anyway. This made the problem disappear.

I finally set up the local rsync mirror on my server – so that I don’t have to sync twice over the internet (the server syncs with the internet, the client syncs with the server).

I followed the wiki-entry – there is not much to add to it, really… and it works flawlessly…

If only all software was that easy to configure…

When it comes to compile programs, Distcc and CCache are two nice little programs. For distcc, simply emerge it; then, in /etc/conf.d/distccd, near the bottom of the file, make sure that the –allow option matches the network (in my case, it’s –allow=10.10.10.0/24). Start it and add it to the default runlevel – voila!

For CCache, simply follow the wiki entry. Simply emerge it, configure the links and add it to the FEATURES in /etc/make.conf. Done.

Goal for today is two things: First, adjust portage to our needs (i. e. tweak some of make.conf); and then, get syslog-ng and vixie cron up and running.

For make.conf, main thing is to add ELOG settings. It’s basically two lines. So, here is now the full /etc/make.conf, including the already promised USE flags:
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PORTAGE_NICENESS=3
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
FEATURES="distlocks parallel-fetch"
PORTAGE_ELOG_CLASSES="warn error log"
PORTAGE_ELOG_SYSTEM="save"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.solnet.ch/mirror/Gentoo http://gentoo.mirror.solnet.ch"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE_GENERAL="nptl bash-completion spell unicode vim-syntax"
USE_LIBS="bzip2 curl curlwrappers gd gif graphviz iconv imagemagick imlib jpeg jpeg2k libwww mime mng ncurses pdf png readline slang svga tiff xpm zlib"
USE_HARDWARE="acpi apm cdr dvd dvdr dvdread foomaticdb gpm iee1394 lm_sensors mmx ppds sse"
USE_SERVER="apache apache2 cups ftp imap maildir -mbox mysql samba usb xinetd"
USE_SECURITY="clamav cracklib crypt sasl ssl"
USE_X="-gnome -kde -X"
USE_LANG="ocaml perl php python ruby tetex tidy xml xmlrpc xsl"
USE="${USE_GENERAL} ${USE_LIBS} ${USE_HARDWARE} ${USE_SERVER} ${USE_SECURITY} ${USE_X} ${USE_LANG}"

And now, we set the locale for the system – basically creating a file /etc/conf.d/02locale:
de_CH.utf8

With everything out of the way, we can start to configure syslog-ng. There is a part within the Gentoo Linux security guide about syslog-ng – which we use as a basis to create the syslog-ng.conf file, and we emerge logsentry (which includes altering something in /etc/cron.hourly, as suggested by portage).

Now, we configure cron. There is a good entry in the wiki about cron. So, we emerge logwatch and configure it as indicated; then, we emerge and configure logrotate, and we add a cronjob for portage. That’s it – cron is up and running and we have a feasible log maintenance!

Last daemon to configure is ntp – to keep the system’s time in sync. These servers are added to /etc/ntp.conf:
server bernina.ethz.ch
server ntp.univ-lyon1.fr
server tick.keso.fi
server fartein.ifi.uio.no
server ntp2a.mcc.ac.uk
server ntp2b.mcc.ac.uk

We also make sure that the time can be synced by uncommenting the very last line of ntp.conf. That’s it – we have configured the most important system tools!

Now, the only thing to find out is the funny drop-outs that I encounter when connected via ssh – the connection just drops from time to time…

One thing to do – passwordless login via ssh! There is a Gentoo wiki entry on this which we follow.