SEO

I have a P4 1.7 laptop, and I've been fiddling with gentoo on it for ~
a week.

I initially had some trouble because I was using one of the 2003
builds and emerge commands kept failing. When I switched to 2004.2, it
cleared up. Then, I moved from the universal cd to a minimal cd, and
had to work out "where" the stage 1 files were for download. I got
help with that and moved forward.

I finally got to "emerge system". While I watched all the pretty,
inexplicable build statements scroll by, I noticed that it said
repeatedly that I had a 386 machine.

When the emerge was over, I checked my make.conf. I had forgotten to
update the CHOST from 386-pc-linux-gnu to 686-pc-linux-gnu. However, I
_had_ set the MARCH flag to i686.

Reading over the emerge notes in the installation manual, I see that I
can do something along the lines of 'emerge --update --deep --newuse
world'. If I'm reading the manual correctly, this will update 'all' my
packages (including dependant ones) and recompile with any new USE
flags that have been added.

But, that's noted explicitly for USE flags. I didn't leave off (or
change) a USE flag. That leaves me to ask -- is my existing system
'hosed'? Do I need to wipe the partition and start over yet again?
Will the above update work with a change to CHOST? Is there some other
'fix' outside of wiping the partition and starting yet again?

And, for that matter, is there an "easier" way to do a clean install
than to delete the partition and re-make it? Is there a way to
manually remove portage and start the stage 1 build over again? Could
I just...I dunno...delete /etc and then extract the stage 1 files
again? Any time I make a reasonably serious mistake (and there's been
alot of them ), I've resolved it by starting from reformatting that
partition. It would be nice if I could just delete the key parts that
have changed since I opened the stage 1 file, and go forward from
there.

Gwen

Gwen Morse wrote:

> I finally got to "emerge system". While I watched all the pretty,
> inexplicable build statements scroll by, I noticed that it said
> repeatedly that I had a 386 machine.
>
> When the emerge was over, I checked my make.conf. I had forgotten to
> update the CHOST from 386-pc-linux-gnu to 686-pc-linux-gnu. However, I
> _had_ set the MARCH flag to i686.

Bummer.
You see, those settings all have different implications:
- the CHOST variable determines ON what machine you build.
It is mostly used by gcc itself during the build process, to set certain
capabilities.
- the USE flags set package-specific dependencies on features supplied
by other packages, and so have little to do with general system
optimisation; although including mmx, sse and sse2 is certainly a good
thing, especially when compiling multimedia and graphics stuff!
- the CFLAGS setting determines what actual machine you build FOR:
-march means build for this architecture, foregoing any and all
compatibility, while -mcpu merely sets the compatibility /level/ for
your system, meaning an mcpu setting of i686 will run on a P2 and up,
while i386 will run on anything that supports Linux.

The biggest impact on performance will be had by setting mcpu=i686,
which you did.

> Reading over the emerge notes in the installation manual, I see that I
> can do something along the lines of 'emerge --update --deep --newuse
> world'. If I'm reading the manual correctly, this will update 'all' my
> packages (including dependant ones) and recompile with any new USE
> flags that have been added.

True.

> But, that's noted explicitly for USE flags. I didn't leave off (or
> change) a USE flag. That leaves me to ask -- is my existing system
> 'hosed'? Do I need to wipe the partition and start over yet again?
> Will the above update work with a change to CHOST? Is there some other
> 'fix' outside of wiping the partition and starting yet again?

Of course ;-)

emerge -e system

with the updated make.conf and the whole system will be remerged with
those settings.

Unfortunately, there is no way to do the bootstrap (stage 1) over, short
of... doing it over - which equates to starting from scratch.

> And, for that matter, is there an "easier" way to do a clean install
> than to delete the partition and re-make it? Is there a way to
> manually remove portage and start the stage 1 build over again? Could
> I just...I dunno...delete /etc and then extract the stage 1 files
> again? Any time I make a reasonably serious mistake (and there's been
> alot of them ), I've resolved it by starting from reformatting that
> partition. It would be nice if I could just delete the key parts that
> have changed since I opened the stage 1 file, and go forward from
> there.

There are no "key parts" - as you should have intuited by now, starting
from stage 1 builds you a *complete* system, so which parts do you think
you'll be able to keep ?

In fact, *keeping* /etc and ditching the rest is actually your best bet
- it will save you quite a bit of configuring after the fact ;-)

--
J

Where does the shit go ?

Jeroen Geilman wrote:

> - the USE flags set package-specific dependencies on features supplied
> by other packages, and so have little to do with general system
> optimisation; although including mmx, sse and sse2 is certainly a good
> thing, especially when compiling multimedia and graphics stuff!

Are both mmx, sse and sse2 valid USE flags for a Pentium 4 Prescott?
--
Leif Biberg Kristensen
http://solumslekt.org/

Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
>
> Are both mmx, sse and sse2 valid USE flags for a Pentium 4 Prescott?

I think so. To know for sure, try
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'flags'

hth,
--
Ben M.

Ben Measures wrote:

> Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
>>
>> Are both mmx, sse and sse2 valid USE flags for a Pentium 4 Prescott?
>
> I think so. To know for sure, try
> cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'flags'

Thanks!
The new --newuse option to emerge is great for tweaking. After adding mmx
in /etc/make.conf, I run an update like this:

emerge -avuD --newuse world

It's almost like magic :-)
--
Leif Biberg Kristensen
http://solumslekt.org/