If you run Gentoo on your Alpha...

[mattst88]

If you run Gentoo on your Alpha,

• we'd like to know about it.
  
• we'd like for you to hang out on IRC with us (#alpha and #gentoo-alpha on irc.freenode.net)
  
• we'd like for you to help test packages and find bugs
  
• we'd like for you to help add content to the AlphaLinux.Org Wiki
  

Gentoo/Alpha officially consists of two developers right now (I'm kind of freelance) -- so we're really stretched thin and could use your help.
_________________
My Wiki page

[dogshu]

Howdy,

I'm a Gentoo/Alpha user. I am rather impressed that you guys have Gentoo working so well on alpha with such limited resources, it even works better than NetBSD and OpenBSD on my machine. Meaning X actually works without any corruption or color issues. I was asked to join you guys on IRC in this bug, however I almost never use IRC, so I don't think that will be productive. I am willing to do some light testing of packages, however something to keep in mind is that I don't use my alpha as my main machine. Anyway, if you'd like to discuss this further, we can do it here in the forum, or you can e-mail me at the address I use for bugs.gentoo.org. Thanks for the great work guys!

[ddc]

alpha heats too much energy, you'd better consider people want lighter machines

[mattst88]

[LinuxFreakus]

I use Gentoo on my Alpha currently (AlphaServer 1200)... actually I have been using it since about 2002ish (don't really remember when I ditched redhat)... It started out with DEC Unix, then I switched to redhat to get more modern apps and because I didn't need Oracle anymore (stopped using it as a "real" server because newer/cheaper/faster/efficient hardware was readily available) but I still just have a love for the Alpha (you can pry it from my cold dead hands) and I hack around whenever I have free time. Then it became clear the that Alpha was going to be dropped like a hot potato from RH, so I came to Gentoo and never looked back.

I am rather alarmed by the state of Alpha support these days, I recently noticed that Debian has dropped Alpha from its release builds, so lenny is likely to be the last release... there are no active porters anymore for Debian (seems like there is one guy but he no longer has time). What is the situation here in Gentoo? I'm worried that Gentoo could suffer the same fate. I do not want to let this happen.

[mattst88]

[LinuxFreakus]

This is great. I felt like we almost fell off a cliff there. I will definitely be working whenever I have time to help improve things further. The more people we have who are capable of fixing issues or helping to test, even if only intermittently, will help improve the chances of the alpha port remaining viable going forward.

[Tim Fontenot]

Let me see if I can get Gentoo downloaded and installed on my AlphaServer 800. If all goes well, I will be happy to be of some assistance. I can't code, but I can test. Not a lot of time to fool with the Alpha, but if it becomes usefull using Gentoo, I will see that it gets a little more of my time.

[Alphaer]

I'm Gentoo user and have Alphas.
How can I help the project?
May I get wishlist to port?

[phajdan.jr]

[mattst88]

[Syntaxis]

[lewis]

Count me too. I was wondering who did all the work - thanks for that.
pls point me to newbie howto on setup/use of IRC that might work on Gentoo...

Stephen Lewis
API CS20 - dual EV68


$ emerge --info
Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/alpha/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.11.2-r0, 2.6.31-gentoo-r10 alpha)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r10-alpha-EV68AL-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:00:01 +0000
app-shells/bash: 4.0_p37
dev-lang/python: 2.6.4-r1
dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.65
sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1
sys-devel/binutils: 2.20.1-r1
sys-devel/gcc: 4.3.4, 4.4.3-r2
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6b
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.30-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="alpha"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="alpha-unknown-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-mieee -pipe -O2 -mcpu=ev67 -mtune=ev67"
CHOST="alpha-unknown-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /var/bind"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-mieee -pipe -O2 -mcpu=ev67 -mtune=ev67"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/ http://distfiles.gentoo.org/ http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/"
LANG="C"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://10.0.200.136/gentoo-portage"
USE="X a52 aac acl alpha berkdb branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cxx dbus dri dts dvd dvdr encode examples exif fam firefox flac gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk guile hal iconv ipv6 jpeg lcms ldap libnotify mad mikmod mng modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python qt3support readline reflection sdl session spell spl sqlite ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcl tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis x264 xcb xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[Altivo]

Uh-oh, scary how old this thread is with no new posts, but I'll bump it anyway.

I have just retired from my work as a librarian and network administrator. I have worked in the past as a documentation writer and as a quality control engineer for a library software house (NOTIS Systems, R.I.P. alas) and was once a VAX systems manager and before that a system programmer for a large IBM mainframe shop. (That was a looooong time ago, though.)

I own too many computers, but my two Alphas (a PWS 433au and an Alphaserver DS10) are among my favorites. I was really disappointed when Debian went dormant for these machines, as OpenVMS just isn't suitable as a modern desktop environment. OpenBSD claims to support Alphas, but without a working X server and with most of the packages I've tried from ports labeled "broken on Alpha" I have to question that claim.

It looks to me as if Gentoo still works. The Handbook for Alpha has some bad instructions in it that need correction, and I've found a major defect in the LiveCD installation image that I downloaded for 4.0.5, but I have managed to get the command line environment running on the PWS 433au and it runs well. I'm about to try to bring in Xorg functionality, and a bit nervous about the vague nature of the available instructions.

Given the strengths and gaps noted in my background (I'm still good at several languages but was never a C coder, for instance) I'm certainly willing to do what I can to help keep the Alpha port of Gentoo going. Documentation and testing are both strong points in my repertoire.

The PWS is up and running daily, and I'd like to use it as my main desktop machine and for amateur radio functions. In answer to the fellow who objected to power use and heat output a while back, I'll point out that the workstation Alphas are no worse than many Intel/Windows based desktop machines in this respect. Agreed, the big multiuser servers are more like a VAX, but there aren't many of those left running. Linux users are much more likely to be looking at either the desktop workstations with PCI bus slots or the later lightweight rack-mount servers like the DS20s.

Anyway, I'm here and available. And I'll check into the IRC as often as I can. Somedays, other things take precedence, of course. I'll make an e-mail address available in my profile here, and I will also respond to any private messages here on the forum. Let me know what I can do to help.
_________________
Have patience with me, I'm only half-baked.
--Altivo

[NeddySeagoon]

Altivo,

The handbook is on the Wiki. You should be able to fix it yourself :)
If not, sign up to bugs.gentoo.org and post a bug.

Post a bug for the liveCD too.

If you have got to grips with Internet Relay Chat, there will be a few channels on freenode.net that may interest you.
Some are very busy, others are quiet. To keep spam down, you need to register your nickname before you can speak in most of them.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.