On Thu, 2003-12-11 at 19:34, Brett I. Holcomb wrote:
> Something is royally messed up.
>
> I've created the /etc/portage/package.unmask . I put media-sound/alsa-driver
> and all the other alsa stuff a media-sound/alsa-driver or whatever the
> package is in the file. The format was media-sound/alsa-driver or
> media-libs/alsa-lib. I did this for driver, lib, tools, utils. Supposedly
> this should unmask the correct?
This should probably be in an FAQ somewhere.
Running masked/testing packages on a system with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=arch
First some background:
There are essentially three levels of packages in portage
a. Masked
b. testing
c. stable
Masked packages are packages that are typically either broken or
unmaintained. The developers add the package names to the file
/usr/portage/profiles/package.mask.
Packages marked for testing are marked in the ebuild using the variable
KEYWORDS This variable will have the value <~arch> where arch is the
specific architecture in question. Most people run on a x86
architecture, so the variable in that case will be ~x86
Stable packages are also designated using the KEYWORDS variable in the
ebuild. For a stable package the variable will have the value <arch>
For most people running a x86 system, it would be just x86.
Finally, for masked packages, the KEYWORDS variable can be set to either
stable or testing. Typically, the broken packages or marked as testing,
while the unmaintained packages where marked stable.
Stable vs Testing:
The ACCEPT_KEYWORDS variable in the file /etc/make.conf can be set to
determine if portage will install stable or testing packages when
installing packages.
If ACCEPT_KEYWORDS is set to ~arch, then portage will consider all
ebuilds that have KEYWORDS set to either <arch> or <~arch> and will not
look at any packages that are masked.
If ACCEPT_KEYWORDS is set to arch, then portage will only consider
unmasked packages that have KEYWORDS set to arch.
The problem most people have arises when they want to only run a couple
of non-stable packages. If you set ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~arch, then you will
be installing all packages marked for testing and are running the risk
of having something break. A lot of people prefer to keep the overall
system at the stable package level and only run a selected few
applications at an unstable/testing level.
How to run a masked and/or testing package on a system that has
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=arch
1. The first thing that you have to do is determine what state the
package is listed in portage. The best tool for determining that is the
etcat command. The following command will list all versions of a
package in portage and there stable/testing state. (If you don't have
this command on ypur system, run emerge gentoolkit to install the
command.) Here is an example of the output:
# env ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" etcat -v ac-sources
[ Results for search key : ac-sources ]
[ Applications found : 3 ]
* sys-kernel/ac-sources :
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.21-r4 (2.4.21-ac4)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r1 (2.4.22-ac1)
[M~ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r4 (2.4.22-ac4)
[ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r5 (2.4.22-ac5)
[ ~ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23 (2.4.23-ac0)
(I contrived this example to show all possible states, you won't see
this on your system) In this case, the entry in the package mask file is
"<=sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r4" The ebuilds for 2.4.22-r4 and 2.4.23
have KEYWORDS=~x86, all the other ebuilds have KEYWORDS=x86. The
characters in the brackets show the state of the ebuild. The letter 'M"
in the first column means that the ebuild is masked. The '~' in the
second column means that the ebuild is marked for testing with ~arch.
In this example, a system with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=x86 would by default
install ac-sources-2.4.22-r5. A system with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 would
install ac-sources-2.4.23.
Assuming that your KEYWORDS is set to "x86". You want to run
ac-sources-2.4.23. What you need to do is create a portage overlay
directory. The first step is to create a directory somewhere. On my
system, I use /usr/local/portage. The second step is to set the
variable PORTDIR_OVERLAY in the /etc/make.conf file to point to that
directory. In my case, my make.conf entry is
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage
The next step is to copy the desired ebuild(s) into your portage
overlay. Using the case above, the commands I would use are:
1. cd /usr/local/portage
2. mkdir sys-kernel
3. cd sys-kernel
4. cp -a /usr/portage/sys-kernel/ac-sources .
This copies the ac-sources tree from portage into the overlay. The next
step is to remove the unwanted ebuilds from the overlay.
5. rm ac-sources-2.4.21-r4.ebuild
rm ac-sources-2.4.22-r1.ebuild
rm ac-sources-2.4.22-r4.ebuild
rm ac-sources-2.4.22-r5.ebuild
You are now left with ac-sources-2.4.23.ebuild. Edit the file and find
the KEYWORDS variable and set it to KEYWORDS=x86
Now rerunning the etcat -v command shows the following:
# env ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" etcat -v ac-sources
[ Results for search key : ac-sources ]
[ Applications found : 3 ]
* sys-kernel/ac-sources :
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.21-r4 (2.4.21-ac4)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r1 (2.4.22-ac1)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r4 (2.4.22-ac4)
[ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r5 (2.4.22-ac5)
[ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23 (2.4.23-ac0)
You can now run emerge ac-sources and portage will install
sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23.
Finally, if you want to run a package that is masked, the way to unmask
the package is to place an entry in the file /etc/portage/package.unmask
Since ac-sources is no longer being maintained, ac-sources has been
masked. Running the etcat command gives us the following:
# env ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" etcat -v ac-sources
[ Results for search key : ac-sources ]
[ Applications found : 3 ]
* sys-kernel/ac-sources :
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.21-r4 (2.4.21-ac4)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r1 (2.4.22-ac1)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r4 (2.4.22-ac4)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r5 (2.4.22-ac5)
[M~ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23 (2.4.23-ac0)
This indicates that all packages have been masked. Assuming that we
want to run ac-sources-2.4.22-r5. We need to do the following. First
make sure that /etc/portage exists as a directory. If it doesn't,
create it with mkdir /etc/portage. The next step is to create an entry
in /etc/portage/package.unmask. The simplest way is to run echo
"=sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r5" >> /etc/portage/package.unmask This
will append the entry to the end of the file. Now running etcat -v we
see:
# env ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" etcat -v ac-sources
[ Results for search key : ac-sources ]
[ Applications found : 3 ]
* sys-kernel/ac-sources :
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.21-r4 (2.4.21-ac4)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r1 (2.4.22-ac1)
[M ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r4 (2.4.22-ac4)
[ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.22-r5 (2.4.22-ac5)
[M~ ] sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23 (2.4.23-ac0)
Running emerge ac-sources will now install ac-sources-2.4.22-r5.
If you wanted to run ac-sources-2.4.23, you would need to place
sys-kernel/ac-sources-2.4.23 in your /etc/portage/package.unmask file
and copy the ebuild to the portage overlay and set the KEYWORDS variable
to be stable.
Finally, if you want to mask a package to prevent it from being upgraded
to a higher version, you can use the file /etc/portage/package.mask to
mask the packages locally. The best way to ensure that you are
installing what you want to install is to use the env
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch" etcat -v command to verify the state of the
package according to portage. Once the etcat command shows the package
as unmasked and stable, you can install the package.
Hopefully, this overview will help. Feel free to ask me questions for
where I may have not been clear in my explanation.
Regards,
Paul
--
My Gentoo stuff: http://varnerfamily.org/pvarner/gentoo
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
