Gentoo 2006.0 Feature Requests

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:00 am Post subject:

An additional feature requrest to emerge and one that I feel is VERY IMPORTANT is that when a user asks emerge to remove acl or attr, emerge searches for the acl USE flag and if present issue in red large font the warning that doing so will break the system and wait for a specific input from the user. That would prevent or make it harder for users to break their system by accident or ignorance.
As far as I can tell this is the most difficult misteak to recover from in Gentoo. One can use the binary packages created by avenj at http://dev.gentoo.org/~avenj/bins/ but unfortunately some archs as AMD64 still don't have binary packages for acl and attr.
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ecatmur · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 12:54 pm Post subject:

I don't like that idea much - special-casing like that is never good. In any case it doesn't apply to Gentoo/ALT system structures (i.e. non-GNU systems).

Anyway, removing attr can only be done by running a depclean without a newuse world, which depclean specifically advises against. And it's easy to recover from (no, really) using busybox which is now in system.
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:32 pm Post subject:

ecatmur,

I can't speculate on attr, but I can assure you that I removed acl with an emerge -C acl without any warning.
I wasn't aware that you could use busybox to recover from this. Is busybox a system dependency? Do you know if there's any guide on the forums or in the gentoo site that explains how to recover the system using busybox? Perhaps, my feature request should be for a guide on how to use busybox to recover one's system.
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Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
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Genone · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:58 pm Post subject:

Randomly removing packages is never a good idea :wink:

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 3:21 pm Post subject:

It's true and it was certainly my misteak. By the way, I didn't "randomly" decide to remove acl.
I was just asking for a WARNING and since I learned from ecatmur that busybox allows to recover from that error, I was wondering whether a guide explaining how to do that exists in the forums or in the documentation resources.
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Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

ecatmur · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 3:39 pm Post subject:

Well, yeah; if you go round removing packages at random (or without at least checking what depends on them) things are going to break.

Recovery with busybox: I haven't done it myself (because I can always boot my systems from CD or from USB) but there's a few options I can see.

If you have (or can get) a shell then run busybox sh and create links to busybox for whatever's broken; otherwise boot in with init=/bin/busybox.
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dep: Revdeps that work
Using command-line ACCEPT_KEYWORDS?

LinuxBlues · l33t Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 892

Genone · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:41 am Post subject:

LinuxBlues · l33t Joined: 26 Mar 2005 Posts: 892

ecatmur · Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 9:31 am Post subject:

I think filter rules aren't in Gentoo stable rsync (2.6.0). They certainly are in 2.6.4 upwards.
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Using command-line ACCEPT_KEYWORDS?

Cinquero · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2004 Posts: 249

What I'd like to see next in Gentoo:

1.) Most important warnings from the GWN as MOTD on login. Many of us are just too lazy to read a whole GWN *g*. Maybe only relevent titles should be display (depending on the installed packages)
2.) emerge messages (ie. perl-cleaner instructions) as one-liners in the MOTD.
3.) Remote-administration support for custom/trivial setups such that regular users don't have to care for system administration.

The first two should be fairly easy to implement and I think they would be of much use because they would dramatically improve communication between devs and users. The last one would let us compete with the old-style distributions and let us be superior to them: more recent software, no configuration needs to be done by the user (at least in some cases, ie. simple desktop setups with LAN, where in principle only the gateway and the local ip has to be specified... and in DHCP cases not even these.)

Let us bring Gentoo to the masses: always up-to-date, no reinstallations as with Windows, always secure, and thousands of packages available at your fingertips. Just as it ever should have been.

RuiP · l33t Joined: 15 Jan 2005 Posts: 643

Well there is a Gentoo 2006.0 Feature Requests. Perhaps your wishes will get more attention on a huge thread (10 pages now) specific for requests.
Many voices on the same request make it reach easely the ears of gods... eh, sorry... developers

Cinquero · Apprentice Joined: 24 Jun 2004 Posts: 249

Here are mine: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-427078.html

And how about establishing a Gentoo User Task Force, GUTF, which concentrates on all the issues not solved for such a long time?

Take the official portage tree and use new methods to test stability of packages, distribute system updates, receive user feedback, implement automatic testing procedures for media converters and all sorts of system tools etc.etc.etc.

For fast and accurate error feedback, one could let users decide if they want to let GUTF use their systems as test systems where the first wave of new packages will be rolled out: compilation and installation problems would be sent back immediately and automatically, so the amount of similar automatic error reports would signal a real problem.

Additionally, the GUTF could define configuration standards for common apache etc. setups, ie. how to identify CGI scripts and all sorts of such things. A GUTF User would then on one side be limited to certain Apache setups, but on the other would never have to care about the security of his system or about config files changing their format or location: specific GUTF tools would then do the conversion (automatized remote administration).

I personally think it is in most cases not necessary that every Gentoo user configures his box in its entirety. For most of us, core components can be set up pretty commonly.

Maybe we should ask commercial entities like IBM to start such a thing -- this would be even more useful on an enterprise-level (well, why don't we see the world as an enterprise where Gentoo has to be rolled out in multiple waves? *g* Just think about the importance of such a project...)

afabco · Guru Joined: 24 Feb 2004 Posts: 380

It's been mentioned before off-and-on, but I'll bring it up again.

PAM should be something that is added to a base install, just like picking a file system and adding the fs-tools or a picking and emerging a system logger.

Thanks for a great and versatile distro.
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el_Salmon · Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 6:44 pm Post subject:

I hope Gentoo Developers include support of licences control to split opensource ebuilds and propietary ebuilds, like Debian or Ubuntu non-free packages trees.

curtis119 · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:02 pm Post subject:

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

wolf31o2 · Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject:

Since I'm really the guy this thread should be talking to, I'm going to answer a few of these questions.

#1. rt2500 - not until it goes stable in the tree

#2. vim in stages - probably not ever, for one, it is *huge* compared to nano, and second, the stages really are designed more for a Linux noob than a Unix guru.... besides, that's what multiple virtual terminals is for, vim is on the CD itself, you know

#3. ndiswrapper - not gonna happen... I see absolutely 0 point in adding a completely non-functional "driver" where you're required to use a USB key to bring your own drivers... we have a networkless installation method... use it... since you're already using your USB key, why not add the ndiswrapper distfiles to your key, too, and just emerge ndiswrapper after you've compiled your kernel? it is no harder than copying the Windows driver yourself anyway...

#4. sshd/root password by default - never going to happen... ever... we will not ship anything that is that insecure by default... that being said, we do have catalyst and livecd-kconfigs and livecd-specs in the tree... feel free to build your own CD with this done, but don't ever expect us to make our users that vulnerable

#5. glep19 - let this piece of junk die, please... it significantly increases the load on every single developer and was envisioned and enacted by some people that aren't even developers, but instead server admins... the problem is they didn't comprehend the immensity of their request, so it died on the vine due to a lack of support... I am actually working on an alternate proposal, which I should have out some time after the release...

As for most of these requests, using the forums is the absolute *worst* place to put your requests and have them seen or even considered. Most Gentoo developers avoid the forums like the plague. Release Engineering works from exactly two locations, https://bugs.gentoo.org and the gentoo-releng mailing list. If you have a request, join the list and join the discussions. Also understand that Release Engineering has *zero* authority to enact *any* changes except on the release media itself. Things like asking for packages to be stabilized or features to be added to portage will be ignored since we are not authorized to enact that kind of change, nor do we want to be...
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GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

i went into this post apositely for this...
how can i request ebuilds...
i've already an acount to the bugzilla and i have already bugreported but where,indide buzilla is there a buton for adding request
and where to request features for a package...
for example requesting the inclusion of a patch in an ebuild

by the way for 2006.0 as the title sugest i i will anser:
for the livecd...:
*add wifi support (i,ve used knoppix in order to have madwifi and i installed gentoo with it!!!)
*X and qt or gtk in order to: "make xconfig"
*mabe qtaprted or gparted (i use this in conjunction with command line)
where can i sugest this???(developers won't ever read 10 pages!!!)
or mabe i need to make a livecd specialy for me and add it inside the unofficial wiki

another question...
there are a lot of masked ebuild... (the M+ and M~)
how can we know WHY there are masked...(the exact bug,security reason...)

jmbsvicetto · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2006 3:15 am Post subject:

Hi new_to_non_X86.

In regard to your question about the masked packages, you can always look at /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask for the hardmasked packages and at /usr/portage/package-group/packagename/Changelog for soft masked packages.
_________________
Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

codergeek42 · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2006 3:33 am Post subject:

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

curtis119 · Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2006 5:00 pm Post subject:

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919