Hi People,

Yesterday I succesfully finished my first Gentoo install and I like the
experience so far! There are a few bumps in the road though:

(solved) The Manual told me to add modules I would be needing in
/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 which I did. I put my networkcard
module and my soundcard module there and they loaded nicely. But... no
sound. After pulling a few hairs I realized that my soundcard module
shouldn't be loaded in modules.autoload.d but in the ALSA config file
instead for ALSA compatibility(?). It now works, but somehow it uses OSS
instead. In XMMS I select ALSA and it works, but the volume sliders in
Volume Control only work under the OSS tab. Can I get rid of OSS
altogether?

I'd like to install PHP5 instead of PHP4 but it isn't listed in my 'emerge
search php'. How can this be fixed? I read that PHP5 should be the default
for users?

I experienced a system freeze when trying to mount my extended partition
instead of the logical partitions by mistake. While it was a silly mistake
by me, it shouldn't freeze the system should it?

The dropshadows in xorg 6.8.0 would be nice and I read a tutorial how to
turn this feature on, but the first step already messed up my system. I
was told to add the COMPOSITE extension to the xorg.conf file but the next
boot completely screwed my gnome session. It drew some windows very slowly
and weird and then metacity died. Restarting Gnome did not bring back
metacity, starting it by hand did though. What could be wrong? Do the new
xorg features require hardware acceleration? I have an ATI card and
foresee lots of problems with installing ATI's damn drivers...

And as a sidenote: Are there any good Gnome cd-burn applications like K3b?

Gentoo is great!
Belgarath

Belgarath wrote:

> shouldn't be loaded in modules.autoload.d but in the ALSA config file
> instead for ALSA compatibility(?). It now works, but somehow it uses OSS
> instead. In XMMS I select ALSA and it works, but the volume sliders in
> Volume Control only work under the OSS tab. Can I get rid of OSS
> altogether?

See to that you haven't compiled OSS/Free modules when you buildt your kernel,
do add OSS/Free emulation into your ALSA, so that you can have sound in all
your applications that are written for OSS/Free.


> I'd like to install PHP5 instead of PHP4 but it isn't listed in my 'emerge
> search php'. How can this be fixed? I read that PHP5 should be the default
> for users?

Use

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge php

and you would install an experimental ebuild of php, in many cases it's as
stable as normal ebuilds.


> I experienced a system freeze when trying to mount my extended partition
> instead of the logical partitions by mistake. While it was a silly mistake
> by me, it shouldn't freeze the system should it?

Depends on your harddrive, IDE gets blocked easilly, which can make the
harddrive is blocked untill mount has tried all possible filesystems.


> The dropshadows in xorg 6.8.0 would be nice and I read a tutorial how to
> turn this feature on, but the first step already messed up my system. I
> was told to add the COMPOSITE extension to the xorg.conf file but the next
> boot completely screwed my gnome session. It drew some windows very slowly
> and weird and then metacity died. Restarting Gnome did not bring back
> metacity, starting it by hand did though. What could be wrong? Do the new
> xorg features require hardware acceleration? I have an ATI card and
> foresee lots of problems with installing ATI's damn drivers...

There can be two causes that leads to this problem, the dropshadow uses
software capabilities to make it, which slows down X and Gnome2 is not the
best software, which makes it unstable and act randomly as microsoft windows.

Of course if you don't want MESA to take care of your opengl, you should
install drivers that gives you opengl support, which makes things a lot
faster, and it's better then to turn on the driver specific shadow feature
than use X own.
Some have troubles with ATI driver install, in the same way as nVidia users
has with installing the propertarian drivers, usually it's the config file
editing which causes the main problems.


> And as a sidenote: Are there any good Gnome cd-burn applications like K3b?

No, there aren't any good Gnome2 based cd-burner applications, so keep on
using k3b.


//Aho

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 19:19:04 +0100, J.O. Aho wrote:

> See to that you haven't compiled OSS/Free modules when you buildt your
> kernel, do add OSS/Free emulation into your ALSA, so that you can have
> sound in all your applications that are written for OSS/Free.

Well, I recently recompiled the kernel without OSS compatibility but I
don't know about any compiled OSS modules. I also removed all OSS
references from the alsa config file which should(?) take care of the
modules? But they keep getting loaded.

>> I'd like to install PHP5 instead of PHP4 but it isn't listed in my
>> 'emerge search php'. How can this be fixed? I read that PHP5 should be
>> the default for users?
>
> Use
>
> ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge php
>
> and you would install an experimental ebuild of php, in many cases it's
> as stable as normal ebuilds.

Thanks! It doesn't need to be extra stable as I use it for development
purposes anyway. It is churning away right now...

Can I use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" for all extra php related stuff like
mod_php5? And what exactly am I compiling right now? Is it the latest and
greatest or a selected 'almost stable' package?

> Some have troubles with ATI driver install, in the same way as nVidia
> users has with installing the propertarian drivers, usually it's the
> config file editing which causes the main problems.

I'll try this. Dropshadows don't just look great but makes windows easier
to identify.

> No, there aren't any good Gnome2 based cd-burner applications, so keep
> on using k3b.

Hhm, that's a pity. I was kinda hoping I could get rid of the KDE libs
altogether.

Thanks a lot for the reply!
Belgarath

> Can I use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" for all extra php related stuff like
> mod_php5? And what exactly am I compiling right now? Is it the latest and
> greatest or a selected 'almost stable' package?

It is not recommended. Recommended way is to put specific package to
/etc/portage/package.keywords file.
for example:

dev-php/php ~x86

You can do it with every package that is aviable in portage.
Read informations about dealing with masked packadges in portage
manual or Gentoo Handbook.


m.s.w

On 2005-02-19, Belgarath <services@microsoft.com> wrote:
>> Use
>>
>> ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge php
>>
>> and you would install an experimental ebuild of php, in many cases it's
>> as stable as normal ebuilds.
>
> Thanks! It doesn't need to be extra stable as I use it for development
> purposes anyway. It is churning away right now...
>
> Can I use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" for all extra php related stuff like
> mod_php5? And what exactly am I compiling right now? Is it the latest and
> greatest or a selected 'almost stable' package?

Now, that is a very good question. Don't use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS. Put the
following line in /etc/portage/package.keywords instead. Then you should
have a chance of running a stable system.

dev-php/php ~x86

Belgarath wrote:
> J.O. Aho wrote:
>
>>No, there aren't any good Gnome2 based cd-burner applications, so keep
>>on using k3b.
>
> Hhm, that's a pity. I was kinda hoping I could get rid of the KDE libs
> altogether.

I burn CDs, and I don't use k3b.

Try GCDMaster for your AudioCD needs. Make sure gnome is in your use
flags and 'emerge cdrdao'.

If your data burning needs aren't too much, you might be satisfied with
nautilus' "CD Creator". Simply enter 'burn:///' in the location bar.

You too might find you can do away with k3b.

Hth,
--
Ben M.