Python mocker for Gentoo

Here’s an ebuild for Python mocker. Really cool mock module, which doesn’t come up high on Google.

USB storage devices and gparted

USB devices like pendrives and external drives stopped mounting. I couldn’t work out what was the problem. dmesg showed that the USB device was recognized. Gnome volume manager was started. Hal and dbus also working. And my drives just wouldn’t mount automatically.

I’ve finally found a solution on forums.gentoo.org.  The problem was that gparted, which I happened to install a while ago, put this file into hal’s configuration:

/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/gparted-disable-automount.fdi

I found the „true” part in the file, changed it into „false”, restarted hal, and voila, my drives are being mounted now!

Why was the file put in that place? The story is, gparted puts it there on start so usb devices don’t get in its way. It removes this file on exit. On graceful exit, that is. If it’s killed, it doesn’t remove it and the file just stays there.

Avahi and GDM problem

I didn’t blog about system issues for a little while. Not that I didn’t have any, it’s just the thesis combined with work that were keeping me busy. Since I solved one problem today, here’s information on what was it and how I solved it.

Mount USB pendrive in GNOME

GNOME suddenly didn’t want to mount my USB pendrives. Dmesg said:

Unable to load NLS charset UTF8
FAT: IO charset UTF8 not found

The solution was to change NLS option in the kernel configuration. File systems -> DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -> Default iocharset for FAT, set it to “utf8” (previously: “UTF-8”). This is a mess. UTF-8 should be always spelled as “UTF-8”, not “UTF8”, and I’m surprised that the case matters. Anyway, I’m crazy and I use Gentoo. If you want your linux to “just work”, install Ubuntu.

Gentoo installation feelings

Starting from my favorite Gentoo site, I came across this site, where I found this:

“The Gentoo install was like finding a forest, cutting down the trees, breaking a leg, getting out of the hospital, coming back, taking out the stumps and clearing the land of rocks, planting wheat, building a mill, making flower, making dough, then building an oven in which to burn it to a crisp, stealing a cow, milking it, churning the butter, picking berries, making jam. YUMMY! Breakfast is ready, but you don’t have time to eat because it’s time to update everything, including GCC, which also means a complete recompilation of everything.”

ROTFL! You’ve made a good point, to a degree. But do you know what has pushed me out of Slackware?

CLIPS expert system for Gentoo

I’ve created an ebuild for CLIPS, the tool for building expert systems. After submitting the ebuild to the Gentoo Bugzilla, I was told it was a duplicate and I should’ve searched. Well, I did, but I only found Eclipse related bugs and couldn’t filter them out to see this sole CLIPS bug.

The previously submitted CLIPS (for version 6.21) bug is written better than mine. However, it won’t compile because they released the new version with the same file names, so it’s impossible to emerge it. I updated this ebuild and if you want to install CLIPS on Gentoo, it’s available.

Gentoo’s teTeX broken

Gentoo’s teTeX package won’t compile any L^AT_EX documents. At least on my computer. So I downloaded the TeX Live installation ISO. I ran the installation script, added one path to $PATH, set one environment variable and it works like a charm.

Fighting Gentoo

I've been fighting with Gentoo for two days now. There were irritating issues during system compilation, related to the CHOST variable setting (I'm not running a i386, okay?). Then, I couldn't emerge -e system because there were some unmet dependencies (during first install? come on!). Then I tried to emerge system instead of emerge -e system, because the latter every time starts right from the beginning and throws out all of already compiled stuff. Then there were dependency problems again, as ./configure scripts couldn't find necessary components. It wasn't the portage systems that claimed the dependencies, it was the original ./configure scripts that complained. Being stuck, I started doing whatever else I could. I added a Gentoo mirror in make.conf and synced the portage tree. Wow, there's a lotta software in portage. Then, emerge -e system again. Well, now it's still milling.

I also updated the portage itself, and I noticed that during dependency calculation, the usual rotating stick was replaced with some flashing green letters. I thought that there's something to read in them, and it's my terminal that doesn't have proper colors, so I tried hard… and read: You're paying too much attention. I think this text varies each time the portage calculates dependencies. I thought about reading it, but I decided not to pay attention.

Gentoo installation in background

I bought two DVDs with Gentoo distribution yesterday. After reading the installation manual for a while, I realized that I don't have to reboot to start installing Gentoo. I just picked one partition, unpacked two tarballs, chrooted and proceeded with the instructions.

Now, I'm working on my school project with Gentoo installation in the background. I reniced the processes, so they don't get in my way.

Why do I want to try Gentoo? Well, what attracts me, is: easy software installation, a whole lot of packages, control over the system. Am I fond of the optimizations? Well, I don't know yet. I'll run the system and see if I can feel any difference. After reading http://funroll-loops.org, I won't talk any more about that because I don't want myself quoted there. Optimize, optimize, my precious…