SEO

Following the guide to get uvesafb working, I emerged klib. This
downloaded kernel 2.6.23 and the 2.6.24-rc7 patch. However, emerging
gentoo-sources previously got 2.6.24-r4. So now there are two kernel
trees. Shouldn't klibc compile against the gentoo-sources kernel?

And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> Following the guide to get uvesafb working, I emerged klib. This
> downloaded kernel 2.6.23 and the 2.6.24-rc7 patch. However, emerging
> gentoo-sources previously got 2.6.24-r4. So now there are two kernel
> trees. Shouldn't klibc compile against the gentoo-sources kernel?

No, there are some trouble with klibc that makes it can't be compiled against
a normal kernel source or against the Linux headers, you need a specially
patched kernel source to make this work, thats why you get the 2.6.24-rc7
kernel source (don't use this one to compile a normal kernel).


> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.

Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo patches, you
should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all unneeded files. A full
install of KDE will take something like 511M when compiled.

--

//Aho

J.O. Aho wrote:
>> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
>> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
>> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.
>
> Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo
> patches, you should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all
> unneeded files. A full install of KDE will take something like 511M when
> compiled.

I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
/usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
>>> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
>>> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.
>>
>> Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo
>> patches, you should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all
>> unneeded files. A full install of KDE will take something like 511M
>> when compiled.
>
> I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
> deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
> /usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
> two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.

It's safe to do so.


--

//Aho

Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
>>> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
>>> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.
>>
>> Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo
>> patches, you should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all
>> unneeded files. A full install of KDE will take something like 511M
>> when compiled.
>
> I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
> deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
> /usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
> two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.

Yes, it's safe. /var/tmp/portage/* will only contain *failed* compiles.
/usr/portage/distfiles is nice to have for when rebuilding something, but if
you don't mind having to redownload packages you recompile, it's safe to zap
that too.

Regards,
--
*Art

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

> J.O. Aho wrote:
>>> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
>>> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
>>> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.
>>
>> Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo
>> patches, you should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all
>> unneeded files. A full install of KDE will take something like 511M when
>> compiled.
>
> I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
> deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
> /usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
> two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.

While it's safe, I wouldn't clear out distfiles. /var/tmp/portage, however,
is safe as long as you don't have a current emerge running ;-)

The reason I keep distfiles (and mine is currently sitting at 3.3GB) is
because I find I'm rebuilding packages intermittently. Keeping the source
around speeds things up, even though I have a 10Mb internet connection.
It's also much kinder to the mirrors in that I'm not re-downloading (much)
each time I do a revdep-rebuild.

That and I have all my gentoo boxes mounting from a single location, so it
actually has the source to all builds on all machines. (Too bad eclean
couldn't check ALL machines for needed sources... luckily, the other
machines are almost solely subsets of my primary machine, so it's pretty
close.) This means that I download each source tarball once, and compile
it up to three times. (Yes, I could just reuse the binaries across the two
P4's, though not the P3, and if I had more P4s, I'd probably do so.) More
if I have to revdep-rebuild.

Darin McBride wrote:

> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>
>> J.O. Aho wrote:
>>>> And space is showing signs of getting tight already. I only have a
>>>> base-system, and yet it eats 3GB (from 10GB total). It looks like
>>>> Gentoo will need outrageous amounts of space for a full KDE desktop.
>>>
>>> Each time you build something, you download the source and gentoo
>>> patches, you should clean out your /usr/portage/distfiles of all
>>> unneeded files. A full install of KDE will take something like 511M when
>>> compiled.
>>
>> I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
>> deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
>> /usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
>> two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.
>
> While it's safe, I wouldn't clear out distfiles. /var/tmp/portage,
> however, is safe as long as you don't have a current emerge running ;-)

If you (and/or the OP) have a sufficient amount of RAM in your system, you
could then make */var/tmp/portage* a /tmpfs./ It's what I do, but then
again, that system has 32 GB of RAM in it, so your mileage may vary. ;-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:
> Darin McBride wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> I used `eclean --destructive distfiles` to clean, but it's not really
>>> deleting anything. Is it safe to simply `rm -rf
>>> /usr/portage/distfiles/*` as well as `rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*`? Those
>>> two directory trees eat about 1GB right now.
>> While it's safe, I wouldn't clear out distfiles. /var/tmp/portage,
>> however, is safe as long as you don't have a current emerge running ;-)
> If you (and/or the OP) have a sufficient amount of RAM in your system, you
> could then make */var/tmp/portage* a /tmpfs./ It's what I do, but then
> again, that system has 32 GB of RAM in it, so your mileage may vary. ;-)

There are some packages that requires a lot of free RAM memory to compile,
like OpenOffice (think that one may be one of the worst).


--

//Aho

J.O. Aho wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> If you (and/or the OP) have a sufficient amount of RAM in your system,
>> you could then make */var/tmp/portage* a /tmpfs./ It's what I do, but
>> then again, that system has 32 GB of RAM in it, so your mileage may
>> vary. ;-)
>
> There are some packages that requires a lot of free RAM memory to compile,
> like OpenOffice (think that one may be one of the worst).

According to the documentation, compiling OpenOffice or KDE uses up about 5
to 6 GB in */var/tmp/portage,* but as stated by others already, if the
compile is successful, then */var/tmp/portage* should be empty again after
that, and if it resides on a /tmpfs,/ then this memory is returned to
userspace as normal process memory.

The prerequisite of course is that one has plenty of RAM in the system. If
for instance you have 8 GB of RAM, then - considering that one usually
compiles OpenOffice or KDE only once over a long period of time - one would
still have 2 GB of regular virtual memory available - /tmpfs/ is pageable,
by the way - for running the base install system, which you would
preferably do without having X running anyway and which would thus only
require some 128 to 256 MB max for the operating system itself and the
build process. Using pipes during the build would also avoid a lot of
temporary files being created in */var/tmp/portage.*

Either way, having */var/tmp/portage* on a /tmpfs/ should work quite well
even on systems with a bit less of RAM outside of the building of KDE or
OpenOffice, and I've seen many recommendations for using the binary
OpenOffice installer rather than compiling it from sources.

But of course, these arguments are all moot if you have only 512 MB or so in
your system. I would recommend using a /tmpfs/ for */var/tmp/portage* only
if your system has at least 4 GB of RAM or if you're running a server that
doesn't require X11, and that thus needs neither KDE nor OpenOffice to be
installed.

Like I said, mileage will and does vary... :-)

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

pk wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> again, that system has 32 GB of RAM in it, so your mileage may vary. ;-)
>
> And I thought my 8GB were a lot! :-)

That machine is destined to be used with multiple Gentoo instances running
atop of the Xen hypervisor. My goal is to set up four Gentoo instances -
the privileged virtual machine included - of which one will be a GUI
workstation installation with KDE, OpenOffice and various other graphical
applications, and the others being basically headless virtual servers. ;-)

The hardware for that machine - Tyan twin-socket ccNUMA board, twin dualcore
HE Opterons (2.6 GHz, 68 Watt), 32 GB ECC registered RAM (ATP pc5300), four
Hitachi 15k SAS 147 GB disks in RAID 5 on an Adaptec 32105 PCIe adapter,
Zippy 800 Watt EPS12V power supply and a CoolerMaster CM-832 chassis with
four 12cm fans - has taken a serious bite out of my piggybank as well...
Let's just say that one could buy a fairly small yet brandnew car for that
money - think "Opel(/Vauxhall) Astra" in basic trim, with the 1.4-liter 16v
engine...

--
Aragorn
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)