On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 01:53:22PM -0800, Grant wrote
> What are your favorite easy Gentoo tricks? Stuff that makes your system a
> lot better in some way with only a minimal amount of effort. I just
> discovered one for xfce4:
>
> emerge tumbler
>
> No other config. Really cool result.
In general, emerging an add-on for an environment will pull in the
environment as a dependancy. Similar to your setup, back when I used
blackbox, emerging bbkeys would pull in blackbox as a dependancy.
My setup takes a little a little setting up, but saves a lot of work
when setting up a new kernel. I run with 2 kernels available...
1) Production
2) Experimental
Sometimes they're identical. Here's a simplified version of my
/etc/lilo.conf with the comment lines stripped out
########################################################
lba32
boot = /dev/sda
map = /boot/.map
install = /boot/boot-menu.b
menu-scheme=Wb
prompt
timeout=150
delay = 50
image = /boot/kernel-3.0-production
root = /dev/sda5
label = Production
read-only # read-only for checking
append = "noexec32=on"
image = /boot/kernel-3.0-experimental
root = /dev/sda5
label = Experimental
read-only # read-only for checking
append = "noexec32=on"
########################################################
This gives me a boot menu with "Production" and "Experimental" kernels
to boot from.
There are also 2 small scripts...
/usr/src/makeover
***IMPORTANT*** The arch/x86 directory is specific to 32-bit i686
kernels. Adjust accordingly if you use a different architecture.
########################################################
#!/bin/bash
make && \
make modules_install && \
cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-3.0-experimental && \
cp System.map /boot/System.map-3.0-experimental && \
cp .config /boot/config-3.0-experimental && \
lilo
########################################################
/usr/src/promote
########################################################
#!/bin/bash
cp /boot/System.map-3.0-experimental /boot/System.map-3.0-production
cp /boot/config-3.0-experimental /boot/config-3.0-production
cp /boot/kernel-3.0-experimental /boot/kernel-3.0-production
lilo
########################################################
I build a new kernel by running "../makeover" from /usr/src/linux. It
does the make and overwrites the previous "Experimental" kernel, and
runs lilo. It does not touch "Production".
After the "Experimental" kernel has been running trouble-free for a
while, I promote it to "Production", by running "../promote" from
/usr/src/linux. This copies the experimental kernel over the production
kernel. At this point, they are identical. Having a previous working
kernel to fall back to has saved me on a few occasions.
Note; on a brand new install, lilo will come back with an error on the
very first run of ../makeover, because there is no Production kernel
found. The first time you run ../makeover, run ../promote immediately
afterwards. This copies the Experimental kernel to Production, and
satisfies lilo.
--
Walter Dnes <[email protected]>
We are apparently better off trying to avoid udev like the plague.
Linus Torvalds; 2012/10/03 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/3/349
