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Hello everyone,

I recently installed Gentoo for the first time (stage 3, networkless, from
standard CD, onto a dual P3 @ 900 Mhz). I'm left with four problems that I
haven't been able to solve with the information I found with Google:

- The AltGr-key on my keyboard (German layout, 102 keys) is not working.
I've seen posts that point to xorg.conf and /etc/conf.d/keymaps, but I'm
quite sure I set those variables correctly... Where else might I look?

- I have a problem understanding portage: How can I get statistical
information from it? I'd like to get overviews on what ebuilds are
installed, a list of those available, more verbose descriptions of
the software etc. (something like aptitude does for Debian's package
management system).
Additionally, I'd like to alter screen output so I can see how much
of an emerge cycle is already done -- a quick glance on a text console
tells me what the compiler is working on, but it'd at least be nice to
see how many ebuilds are still queued. Are there frontends that can do
this?

- Eclipse 3.2 depends on both Java 1.5 and 1.4, the latter seems to be
necessary for building the ebuild only. I'd prefer to only have
JDK 1.5 installed. If I install the binary Eclipse package from
eclipse.org, am I likely to run into troubles?

- Finally: How can I tell a Linux machine to use a high resolution text
mode (like 132x50 chars)? I cannot use a framebuffer because, according
to various sources, this conflicts with 3D acceleration for ATI Radeon
cards.

Many thanks in advance for all hints, and also for this nice distribution!

Regards,

Jürgen

Juergen Starek wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I recently installed Gentoo for the first time (stage 3, networkless, from
> standard CD, onto a dual P3 @ 900 Mhz). I'm left with four problems that I
> haven't been able to solve with the information I found with Google:
>
> - The AltGr-key on my keyboard (German layout, 102 keys) is not working.
> I've seen posts that point to xorg.conf and /etc/conf.d/keymaps, but I'm
> quite sure I set those variables correctly... Where else might I look?

Dunno, you are looking in the right place. Perhaps your keyboard type
differs a wee bit from the one you specified...

> - I have a problem understanding portage: How can I get statistical
> information from it? I'd like to get overviews on what ebuilds are
> installed, a list of those available, more verbose descriptions of
> the software etc. (something like aptitude does for Debian's package
> management system).
> Additionally, I'd like to alter screen output so I can see how much
> of an emerge cycle is already done -- a quick glance on a text console
> tells me what the compiler is working on, but it'd at least be nice to
> see how many ebuilds are still queued. Are there frontends that can do
> this?

You can try a search for the string portage with emerge -s portage or
emerge -S portage. The -s looks in the name of the package, the -S in
the description.

For a list of packages you can simply look in
/usr/portage/category-name, eacht subdir should be a package, for
instance /usr/portage/sci-astronomy

I think it's impossible to see how many percent of a compilation that is
already done.
And normally the top of your (x)term says something like: emerge: (11 of
37) sys-devel/gcc-4.1.1-r1, so you know how many are left.

> - Eclipse 3.2 depends on both Java 1.5 and 1.4, the latter seems to be
> necessary for building the ebuild only. I'd prefer to only have
> JDK 1.5 installed. If I install the binary Eclipse package from
> eclipse.org, am I likely to run into troubles?

I don't know. You can however back up a compiled, installed package
(although Java is a binary release AFAIK) with quickpkg, then unemerge
it and if things don't work out re-emerge it with the emerge -k
packagename command.

> - Finally: How can I tell a Linux machine to use a high resolution text
> mode (like 132x50 chars)? I cannot use a framebuffer because, according
> to various sources, this conflicts with 3D acceleration for ATI Radeon
> cards.

I'd be interesed in hearing that too!

HTH,

Wimmy

Juergen Starek wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I recently installed Gentoo for the first time (stage 3, networkless, from
> standard CD, onto a dual P3 @ 900 Mhz). I'm left with four problems that I
> haven't been able to solve with the information I found with Google:
>
> - The AltGr-key on my keyboard (German layout, 102 keys) is not working.
> I've seen posts that point to xorg.conf and /etc/conf.d/keymaps, but I'm
> quite sure I set those variables correctly... Where else might I look?

I have had trouble with the later xorg's with this, the solution that seems to
work for me has been to add the following option to the InputDevice section
for the keyboard:

Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"



> - I have a problem understanding portage: How can I get statistical
> information from it? I'd like to get overviews on what ebuilds are
> installed, a list of those available, more verbose descriptions of
> the software etc. (something like aptitude does for Debian's package
> management system).

equery is a tool you can use for that, which you get if you emerge
app-portage/gentoolkit.


> Additionally, I'd like to alter screen output so I can see how much
> of an emerge cycle is already done -- a quick glance on a text console
> tells me what the compiler is working on, but it'd at least be nice to
> see how many ebuilds are still queued. Are there frontends that can do
> this?

Not sure about console (xterm you get that in the title), there is some hacks
to give you a progress list for compiling, those may show the amount of
ebuilds left to build. Sadly I can't recal any links, but think they where
somewhere at http://gentoo-wiki.com


> - Eclipse 3.2 depends on both Java 1.5 and 1.4, the latter seems to be
> necessary for building the ebuild only. I'd prefer to only have
> JDK 1.5 installed. If I install the binary Eclipse package from
> eclipse.org, am I likely to run into troubles?

I think eclipse depends on 1.4 when it comes to functions in eclipse itself
that uses java, so you will most likely need both installed, you can of course
unemerge 1.4 when you have emerged eclipse, if you notice things don't work,
then just re-emerge 1.4.


> - Finally: How can I tell a Linux machine to use a high resolution text
> mode (like 132x50 chars)? I cannot use a framebuffer because, according
> to various sources, this conflicts with 3D acceleration for ATI Radeon
> cards.

Select a small font for the console and set a higher vga mode than the default
in the boot option (of course you need to make the kernel to support this).

Alternatively use the frambuffer and the the opensource ATi driver.


//Aho