Hardened Gentoo 2005.0 has problems with X.org and GStreamer

[codehammer]

Hi,

I'd just installed Gentoo 2005.0 on my Pentium 4. While installation wasnt smooth, i did manage to build everything at the end of the day (Most problems were related to uncaptured dependencies between packages. Emerge didnt download all dependencies for some packages, which I had to emerge manually. However once that was done, it went smoothly)

I had used the 'hardened' option in the USE flags. This led to a few problems down the line. While Xorg had built fine, it refused to run. After some time spent researching, I found that the problem was with the 'hardened' option. Once I emerged Xorg without the 'hardened' flag, it ran smooth as butter.

Again, once Gnome 2.10 was installed, GStreamer gave me incessant problems, starting on my logging in : "No sound mixer devices have been found". I emerged all plugins, and tried most everything under the sun for the next 2 days short of throwing my PC out of the window. Finally I found a guide on resolving this issue at the Gentoo wiki written by some kindly soul (God bless him).

This issue too boiled down to the 'hardened' USE flag. Once GStreamer was emerged without this flag, everything was smooth.

I've posted this here hoping to help anyone else facing the same problems, and hopefully get someone from the documentation team to update the documentation.

I was just wondering why the documentation for this flag didnt mention that there was a potential to break apps. It would be helpful if the documentation listed out that Xorg and GSteamer are applications that will break if the 'hardened' flag is used.

On a side note, if any of the flags break a small number of apps, it would be very helpful for the documentation mentions the name of the application that would be broken.

I'll be glad to give my machine's details if any dev requires more detailed info.

[jakamaka]

If this is one of your first experiences with Gentoo or Linux in general I would suggest using something less difficult than hardened-gentoo.
_________________
It would be more interesting to learn from children, than try to teach them how to behave, how to live and how to function. - U.G. Krishnamurti

[codehammer]

I've been with Linux since Redhat 5.x days. In my time, I've known RedHat, Corel Linux, a little of Debian 3.0r1, Knoppix, Fedora Core, and Unbuntu.

However this is my first experience with Gentoo. While it wasnt sour, it could have been smoother. What i expected was i would run 'emerge system' and have it build the system unattended. However several times the build stopped since package dependencies were not caught correctly. I had to manually emerge a few packages. Not a very serious issue.

However the 'hardened' flag totally threw me off. I would never have guessed it being the cause of my problems. While largely most applications had not been affected, Xorg and GStreamer plainly refused to run. Xorg complained about not being able to load some module, and GStreamer complained that it couldnt find the audio mixer. This was a serious issue.

What would be helpful is if this flag is marked as potentially dangerous, and if the document mentions that apps that are broken due this flag, and names those apps specifically.

[ph03n1x]

I use hardened sources as well and I run into problems with several programs, especially desktop Software.

My conclusion is that the hardened sources are optimized for server-usage and not desktop?!

Nevertheless I'm still using hardened sources but I have switched the gcc-config profile back to the vanilla one. This helps a lot...

hth