How to recompile Sabayon without leaving the tree?

[Odysseus]

Here is my dilemma; I originally came to Sabayon after being a long time Gentoo user for several reasons. The first one being that I hosed my long running stable system trying to make the switch from an older version (non-evdev, non-hal) xorg and from KDE3 to KDE4 (at the same time, not too smart) and was looking for a shortcut to get me there that would let me have a usable system while starting from scratch.

The second being that I believe Gentoo has become much too conservative over the last few years in it's stabilization policies so that by the time packages are marked as stable they've become already old or stale. In essence Gentoo has become Debian, so conservative in marking anything as stable that it's behind every other major distribution. It's gotten to the point that there are times when running "stable", that the source files to the ebuilds are no longer on the host servers because they've been superseded by other versions or worse orphaned and no longer under development. Now being conservative is great if one is in a production/server environment where money is on the line, but for home/ personal use this is ridicules.

When I first started running Gentoo 6 years ago this wasn't the case, it was considered "cutting-edge" and new packages were always available there before other distros had them.

That said, running Sabayon intrigued me because I thought that I could install it and be using "fresher" software than what's available in the Gentoo stable tree, but not be constantly upgrading/recompiling as I would be running ~x86 Gentoo.

Now here's the question/problem: How does one stay on the Sabayon tree but recompile their system to their own specific hardware architecture? In my case I compile everything to -march=native (for my pentium-m) -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer and I make adjustments to my use flags to omit non-nvidia graphic cards for example and select my specific audio/video cards and camera in the appropriate lines in my make.conf.

Ideally, what I'd like to do is install Sabayon, then recompile my system for what hardware I actually have on my system, while omitting what I don't. I've tried searching for solutions but haven't found anything to be satisfactory. If I set ~x86 in my make.conf then I'm running Gentoo testing with a Sabayon overlay whether I want to or not. The results being that before long I'm no longer running a relatively stable Sabayon system and instead running Gentoo ~x86 with all of the issues that entails. But if I switch to "stable" in my make.conf then portage wants to downgrade everything and practically ignores the overlay entirely.

Is there a way to "pin" the Sabayon tree to portage, so that I'm only running Sabayon but recompiled to my liking? In other words have the Sabayon overlay behave like "stable" Gentoo. What I'd like to be able to do is when I do an "emerge world" is have portage use the sabayon tree as the basis for my system upgrade but not pull in the newer packages from ~x86 or downgrade what I have already installed to Gentoo stable. This way I'm not constantly upgrading/recompiling packages like I am currently running ~x86. I would in essence be running pure Sabayon just recompiled to my liking and only grabbing from Gentoo the packages I want not in the Sabayon tree.

I know that I could "pin" individual packages in my portage.mask files, but pinning the over 1200 packages I currently have installed I think would be a bit ridicules.

Any answers would be greatly appreciated. TIA

Ciao

[wolfden]

Without reading fully everything, but once u said recompile and stay in the sabayon tree, it was enough.

There is no sabayon tree, Sabayon uses portage, compiling = portage unless you want to use entropy which is binary, which doesn't allow recompiling. You can have our overlay added, but of course, it's not portage.

Entropy runs out of ~ branch also, so you are essentially just a head of entropy is all, not getting unstable from Sabayon.

So bottom line

No Portage = No Sabayon

[joost]

In addition, might want to read: http://joostruis.blogspot.com/2009/06/b ... gress.html

[Odysseus]

First I want to say thank you to joost, your answer / link on this thread as well as on my other thread was informative and helpful. It's people like yourself which make using open source OS's possible, accessible and enjoyable for average folks coming from the Windows world into ours.

wolfden on the other hand, I'm disappointed (to say the least) at your curt dismissive and discourteous, response. Answers like yours and the "RTFM" that proliferate throughout the Linux world are what I think are the main reasons that open source OS's have never risen above being just a niche in the market.

You appear to be a "pretty big cheese" here in these forums with over 7K posts since 2008. I on the other hand have only posted here a few times. This doesn't mean however, that I'm a newbie nor someone to be disrespected or talked down to. I've been running Gentoo for well over 5 years and different flavors of Linux for nearly 15. I built from scratch my first PC (we didn't call them PC's then) from Heathkit as a school project in the mid-70's (I even had to solder the components to the boards). It had a whopping 64K of RAM. I was on the "Net" before there was an Internet. I was an "official" beta tester for Windows 3.x, 95, 98, ME, NT 3.51, 4.0, 2000, and XP. I've also helped out on several distros including Mandrake and PCLOS.

I've been a member of the Gentoo forums since 2004, but only have around 40 posts there. Why? Because I "RTFM" and only post if I can't find a satisfactory answer myself or if I have something positive to contribute that may help someone else. If I don't have something positive to say, I generally keep to myself. That said.....

If you didn't extend me the courtesy of at least reading my post, then you should have at least had enough minimal politeness to have not brazenly said you didn't read it before dismissively answering it.

I had good reason to ask about the "Sabayon tree" as there are numerous annotations throughout the portage and entropy config files mentioning how application "foo-x" must be masked because application "foo-y" is in our tree and both can't exist in the same tree. And anyone who is at all familiar with any distribution knows that there must be some kind of mechanism through which developers are able to halt the introduction of new/newer apps in order to stabilize existing ones prior to a new release cycle.

I'm not a programmer nor a computer professional by trade, I'm a hobbyist. On another post I offered to do some help debugging. In preparation, I changed my compilation flags (removed -fomit-frame-pointer and changed from -O2 to -Os) and recompiled my kernel to activate some debugging features I generally disable. I did this so as I could be of some positive use here.

But after reading your response and observing the lack of activity in these forums, I wonder how much use I can be? Mistreating or maligning potential converts isn't the answer to increasing installed base IMHO. My rant is done.

Ciao

[joost]

my friend, really you draw your conclusions too early.

Tell you what, PM me find me on IRC and I want to have some chit chat with you.


We have a big time diff however. But do not keep this from meeting.

regards.

[wolfden]

Any answers would be greatly appreciated. TIA

what the heck?

I never mentioned RTFM once in my post to your answer. I explained what you asked in a very simple and clear manner. How did that spark such a rude comment? I've also been here longer than 2008 and been on gentoo forums longer than here. I'm not sure what that has anything to do with anything tho. I've been helping both communities.

I work with the community daily and take their inputs/suggestions to help the distro be better. I also put together howtos for wiki and work with getting beta testers for the team. I blog to keep community with updates of current events. I test and work closely with the team members at various levels. A lot years and work/love is dumped into this project cause I believe in it.

Nobody said you didn't have reason to ask about sabayon tree and I pointed out that there isn't one. We have an overlay and everything is portage based.

If you didn't extend me the courtesy of at least reading my post, then you should have at least had enough minimal politeness to have not brazenly said you didn't read it before dismissively answering it.

I was in a hurry at the time and it had a simple answer from the skimming of your post. I was nice enough to say I didn't completely read it incase I misunderstood your question. I figured I had gathered enough information from it to explain that we are not a tree, which seemed to be the biggest question and since you are very well experienced with gentoo based, it should of been enough to say ok, we are portaged based.

If you note, a lot of threads do go unanswered. I do try to read every post on this forum and 98% of them I have, but I don't always have time to do support. If I see an easy issue, I can reply quickly. I'm only human and have responsibilities to my own life also. We only have a small handful of people that regularly visit and do support issues. We also support users in the irc room. We are spread thin and we try to educate our users with all the available resources. The old motto " Help us to help you " goes a long ways here.

But after reading your response and observing the lack of activity in these forums, I wonder how much use I can be? Mistreating or maligning potential converts isn't the answer to increasing installed base IMHO. My rant is done.

Explain what was wrong with my response please. Lack of activity?

I'm not a programmer nor a computer professional by trade, I'm a hobbyist. On another post I offered to do some help debugging.

Nobody is stopping you from doing so. We have a bugzilla just like gentoo. I do the same thing when issues arrive. I will check my pure gentoo/portage system against my pure sabayon/binary system to debug.

I just checked your 8 posts here and this is the only one I have replied to, so I'm not sure where you are coming from being so rude.

We are all here to help and to teach.

[Odysseus]

Any answers would be greatly appreciated. TIA

what the heck?

I never mentioned RTFM once in my post to your answer. I explained what you asked in a very simple and clear manner. How did that spark such a rude comment?...... A lot years and work/love is dumped into this project cause I believe in it...........Nobody said you didn't have reason to ask about sabayon tree and I pointed out that there isn't one. We have an overlay and everything is portage based.

Obviously we've gotten off on the wrong foot and it's hard to make a second "first opinion". I have no doubt you put much work into this project as the sheer number of your posts attest to. I never said you told me to "RTFM", I did however say, as re-quoted below and reiterated now, you gave me a curt dismissive response instead of a polite answer explaining the situation.

If you didn't extend me the courtesy of at least reading my post, then you should have at least had enough minimal politeness to have not brazenly said you didn't read it before dismissively answering it.

I was in a hurry at the time and it had a simple answer from the skimming of your post. I was nice enough to say I didn't completely read it incase I misunderstood your question. I figured I had gathered enough information from it to explain that we are not a tree, which seemed to be the biggest question and since you are very well experienced with gentoo based, it should of been enough to say ok, we are portaged based.

You may have thought you were being helpful but this isn't how you came across. Even in an anonymous setting like this, a careless choice of words can easily hurt feelings with long lasting repercussions. I was taught that the written word is powerful. Choosing carefully what's written requires the utmost care, so as to not allow oneself to be misconstrued. Especially when there's the possibility of being read by those who don't speak English natively.

Unfortunately, too often this is isn't the case, which explains why public discourse in our country has deteriorated to such a coarse level. One never knows who will be reading what has been written, and once read there's no way to retract.

Joost gave a much shorter answer than yours, but contained no hint of condescension and linked to a page that provided a plethora of information. Even though it's obvious that English isn't his native tongue, he was concise and clarifying. The same holds true on the previous post I wrote in which he responded.

If you note, a lot of threads do go unanswered. I do try to read every post on this forum and 98% of them I have, but I don't always have time to do support. If I see an easy issue, I can reply quickly. I'm only human and have responsibilities to my own life also. We only have a small handful of people that regularly visit and do support issues. We also support users in the irc room. We are spread thin and we try to educate our users with all the available resources. The old motto " Help us to help you " goes a long ways here.

But after reading your response and observing the lack of activity in these forums, I wonder how much use I can be? Mistreating or maligning potential converts isn't the answer to increasing installed base IMHO. My rant is done.

Explain what was wrong with my response please. Lack of activity?

I refer to my previous response, and elaborate a bit further. Would you not find it impolite or at least discourteous, to ask what you believe to be a thoughtful, well reasoned question only to have it shot down with a brief comment, with the caveat that it wasn't worth reading because it mentions two key words "recompiling" and "tree"? And in addition, given what appears to be a canned answer?

As to the lack of activity comment.... Generally speaking the more helpful the forum, the more active it will be, for more people will seek it out for answers, even by those running other distros. It was meant as a dig, as such, I apologize for it.

I'm not a programmer nor a computer professional by trade, I'm a hobbyist. On another post I offered to do some help debugging.

Nobody is stopping you from doing so. We have a bugzilla just like gentoo. I do the same thing when issues arrive. I will check my pure gentoo/portage system against my pure sabayon/binary system to debug.

I just checked your 8 posts here and this is the only one I have replied to, so I'm not sure where you are coming from being so rude.

We are all here to help and to teach.

Obviously, you're stretched thin and you're correct we all have something we can learn from each other.

Even though it's now become apparent to me that I'll be unable to do what I initially planned to do by running Sabayon (run a more updated version of Gentoo without the drawbacks of running ~x86) I'll still monitor the board and chime in if I think I can make a positive contribution.

BTW, I must complement you on the wiki and how-to's. I was able to install and try out the full version, then later switch to core with ease because of this information.

I hope our further correspondence will be under better circumstances.

Ciao

[wolfden]

Even though it's now become apparent to me that I'll be unable to do what I initially planned to do by running Sabayon (run a more updated version of Gentoo without the drawbacks of running ~x86) I'll still monitor the board and chime in if I think I can make a positive contribution.

Ciao

And that is what I thought I had made clear in my first post. We are ~arch branch of portage.

Anyway, if you want stable, the corecd would be the way to go. We did at one time have a stable branch release, but we do not have enough man power to run both and it was still portage based, not binary. Perhaps in the future maybe.

[Odysseus]

Even though it's now become apparent to me that I'll be unable to do what I initially planned to do by running Sabayon (run a more updated version of Gentoo without the drawbacks of running ~x86) I'll still monitor the board and chime in if I think I can make a positive contribution.

Ciao

And that is what I thought I had made clear in my first post. We are ~arch branch of portage.

Anyway, if you want stable, the corecd would be the way to go. We did at one time have a stable branch release, but we do not have enough man power to run both and it was still portage based, not binary. Perhaps in the future maybe.

Somehow we're just speaking right past each other. I don't want to run stable (for the reasons mentioned in my original post). But I don't want to be constantly on the upgrade recompile treadmill of running ~x86. Sabayon is compiled for SMP systems w/generic 686 architecture, and all of your kernel settings are adjusted for running large scale servers / farms. I run Linux on my 4 y.o single core pentium-m centrino laptop. I was looking to run basically a more up-to-date Gentoo, but with a less frequent updates and less flakiness than running ~x86.

In any event, as I said I'll check in and see if I can be of assistance. I wish you all much luck.

Ciao.

[wolfden]

ahhhh I see

Funny you should mention this, as about a month ago we were talking in #sabayon-dev about the same thing. Something one could install and not have such a maintenance schedule. I have an older machine that run arch linux, but it has many updates also. We were kinda wondering about CentOS as nobody had used that distro.

We never did reach an answer for it tho.