Log of emerge readable output produced somewhere?

[kcy29581]

[Jeekay]

# PORT_LOGDIR is the location where portage will store all the logs it
# creates from each individual merge. They are stored as YYMMDD-$PF.log

$ ls -l /var/log/portage
total 136
-rw-r--r-- 1 root portage 5346 May 29 12:05 3428-debianutils-2.13.1-r1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root portage 27598 May 29 12:07 3429-attr-2.4.19-r1.log


uh?

[kallamej]

[ozbird]

When installing some packages (e.g. postgresql), I've noticed that they sometimes include messages about what to do post-install to complete the installation. The problem is that these messages can be overlooked, particularly when doing an "emerge -e world". I've had a look through /var/log/emerge.log but the messages don't appear to be logged.

Is there a simple way to retrieve these messages without reinstalling the package?

I had considered writing a script to grep for einfo etc. in the ebuild, but I'm having trouble mapping the package name and version (e.g. dev-db/postgresql-8.0.2-r1) to the ebuild path (/usr/portage/dev-db/postgresql/postgresql-8.0.2-r1) as there isn't a consistent way to split the package name and version. Is there a reliable way to do this?

[Broder1977]

I'm interested in this too. Emerging the packages step by step is no solution for me, but I won't miss the the tips given about important version changes and so on. It would make gentoo-ing much easier...

Bjoern

[radfoj]

Log of emerge readable output produced somewhere?
Its the best thread I have found.

[Maedhros]

Previously duped, now merged from https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2474467.html#2474467 to this thread.

[Woody2143]

[Gentree]

What versions are we refering to here?

[Zarhan]

Is there a schedule planned for portage 2.1 is release?

The roadmap at http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/index.xml is rather...terse (no dates anywhere, just "short term" and "long term" goals)

[chashab]

something like this is needed badly and soon.

I was just emerging world and I heard a couple system beeps. I go to the term in question and hit scroll lock, the message:

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
Please run blah blah blah
ensure bad things won't happen.
blah blah blah

I go to run the program, accidently hit scroll lock again, and boom, message is off the frame buffer. And there is no log of it either. This is a production server I'm working on! How is one supposed to sanely admin gentoo boxes with no decent logging feature??

[Zarhan]

I saw that too. However, I wouldn't take those too seriously, most of the reminders are just there to say "follow the standard updating procedure very meticulously".

(Standard upgrade: emerge sync && emerge -uvDaN world && emerge depclean && revdep-rebuild && dispatch-conf).

Most of the ebuild messages are usually just to the nature of "Do not forget to run revdep-rebuild" or "Do not forget to run etc-update/dispatch-conf". And yes, sometimes I forget some or all of those three last steps. Most of the time it's not that bad, but for occasional packages (like that one saying PLEASE PLEASE or whatever) revdep-rebuild is a must afterward.

When upgrading perl, it did notify me about perl-cleaner. That message has probably been around for at least a few perl versions, but this was the first time I noticed it. Nothing would probably been "broken", just in wrong directories if I hadn't noticed it.

(And that message did only say "use perl-cleaner"...perl-cleaner has quite a few options to try, so basically I guessed that "perl-cleaner all" is the correct option...they could be a bit more specific).

When is the planned release for 2.1?

[username]

[chashab]

Yes, I have switched to screen since then. Still the proper solution is logging. But I digress, it is being worked on...

[-Smooth-]

There has to be a hundred ways to handle the output of an emerge...
(or any command with lots of output for that matter...)

If you don't want to lose any important messages, just log everything to a file.
You can make a directory such as /var/log/emerges to contain these.
# emerge package-name &>package-name.log

> redirects standard output
2> redirects standard error
&> redirects both

if you want to watch what's happening on the screen just run the emerge in the background (append a '&') and "tail --follow" the file
# emerge package-name &>package-name.log &
# tail -f emerge-package-name.log

...or you could try the "tee" command which redirects output to the screen and
a file simultaneously.
# emerge package-name 2>&1 | tee package-name.log

2>&1 redirects stderr to stdout

If you want smaller files, just use gzip. The compression
ratio on this kind of text output is always good. If you want a one-liner,
you can pipe to gzip like this...
# emerge package-name 2>&1 | gzip > package-name.gz

but it's probably safer memory-wise to just run it after the fact...
# emerge package-name &>package-name.log && gzip package-name.log

You can uncompress zipped logs on the fly and read them.
# gunzip -c package-name.gz | less

If you're looking for those notices, you can grep for the colored stars that
tend to accompany them. This regex seems to work.
# gunzip -c package-name.gz | grep "\*..0m"

You could filter the output through that before logging if you wanted.
# emerge package-name 2>&1 | grep "\*..0m" > package-name-notices.log

If this advice has come a little too late for you, you could always search
through the ebuild for ewarn and einfo messages.
# cat /usr/portage/category/package/package-name-1.2.3-r4.ebuild \
| grep '\(ewarn\|einfo\) "' > ebuild-messages.txt

Of course I have to mention that the screen command is definitely worth learning as well.

Anyway, none of this stuff is all that advanced. Of course portage could use some improvement, but ultimately everyone's responsible for their own server. Before pointing fingers at the people who bring us this OS for free, and these tools for free, I think we should all try to use these brains we got for free and really learn how to use them. Most problems can be solved and automated with a good knowlege of bash scripting and a little hard work.
_________________
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[nmbrthry]

[M104]

Here's what I'm doing currently:

Create a portage log directory (if you don't have one already):

[ixion]

[dundas]

thx to Smooth and M104 for your advices, I've always been hunting for those colored stars in long emerge world.
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[nmbrthry]

Portage 2.1-pre is now in Portage! (That sounds kind of funny...)

The new elog support does what we wanted: it creates a single file with all of the messages from the emerge, and you can set the minimum level of verbosity in make.conf (info, warn, error, log). There are other options instead of creating files, but this is the one I have tried.

[linuxtuxhellsinki]

I played a little bit with grep command in /var/log/portage-dir & I've got quite nice results with the next command pointed to the last (31*) hundred of emerge.logs

[Paapaa]

[radio_flyer]

[sonicbhoc]

you could use kuroo (emerge -av kuroo) to emerge stuff, but I'm pretty sure we don't want that, so just fire up Nano and read the ebuild, the information is stored in there somewhere!

[pgrdsl]