Selecting USE flags

[Bachstelze]

To put it a bit more clearly :

For each USE flag, you have a default. If the default is yes and you do not want it, add -useflag. If the default is no and you want it, add useflag. If the default is what you want, add nothing

As termitesaid, the defaults are stored in your profile. Do not edit it directly, as your changes will be overwritten when you update your portage tree. Use the make.conf to define your USE flags globally (i.e. for all packages) or /etc/portage/package.use to define them locally (i.e. on a per-package basis).

Also, remember that what you put in make.conf, you can override using package.use. For example, if I have a Gnome desktop, I will surely have the gtk USE flag enabled. But now I want to install mplayer, and I want only the console version, not the GTK GUI. I could either edit my make.conf, disable the gtk USE flag, install mplayer and edit my make.conf again to re-enable the gtk USE flag, but that's really too much hassle and it will be even more when the time will come to update my mplayer. So instead, I add

media-video/mplayer -gtk

to my /etc/portage/package.use and voilà, the gtk USE flag is disabled only for mplayer

[rsambuca]

Thanks. This is actually starting to make some sense to me now. For better or for worse, I ended up putting this into my make.conf file:

USE="acpi alsa -arts cairo cdr dbus dvd dvdr dvdread eds -emboss encode esd evo fam firefox gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk hal jpeg -kde kerberos ldap mad mikmod mp3 mpeg ogg opengl oss pdf png -qt3 -qt3support -qt4 quicktime sdl spell svg tiff truetype vorbis win32codecs unicode X xml xv a52 aac aalib adns bonobo exif ffmpeg flac ieee1394 imagemagick java javascript matroska mime mmx mozilla multilib musepack nsplugin scanner sse sse2 theora usb cups x264 xcomposite xinerama xscreensaver xvid"

I have compiled the kernel (gentoo-sources), but am stuck on the modules.autoload.d thing. The gentoo manual says to run "modprobe -l" to see what modules are available, but it doesn't work from the chroot environment. A little bit each day, I guess!

[rsambuca]

I also noticed when I looked at the make.conf file from my sabayon installation that there were a number of flags that were not listed on the gentoo site. Are these possibly sabayon specific, or just obscure enough to not matter for most people?

[Bachstelze]

I have compiled the kernel (gentoo-sources), but am stuck on the modules.autoload.d thing. The gentoo manual says to run "modprobe -l" to see what modules are available, but it doesn't work from the chroot environment. A little bit each day, I guess!

Another way to list all the installed modules - and one that works in chroot - is

find /lib/modules/_kernel version here_/ -name "*.ko"

About the "obscure" Sabayon USE flags, could you give a few examples ?

[rsambuca]

Thanks for that command. I actually found them in a file called modules.dep in that folder.

If the module is a big long name, do I add the whole thing, including the path, or just the last part. ie.

/lib/modules/2.6.22-gentoo-r2/kernel/drivers/net/s2io.ko

Do I add that entire line, or just the s2io.ko part into the modules.autoload.d...?

For the Sabayon use flags, there are a bunch of examples that I couldn't find listed anywhere, such as: moznocompose moznoirc zeroconf css povray asterisk mbrola ... plus a bunch more. The use flag list is quite large in sabayon.

cs

[termite]

Put just

s2io

in the modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 files to load the s2io module.

[rsambuca]

Thanks everyone! i can't wait to see if it boots up!

[termite]

Good luck!

[rsambuca]

Well, kernel seems to work so far, it booted up, anyways!

I have emerged xorg-x11, and am now doing the long gnome compilation now.

[rsambuca]

Thanks for all your help! I have everything up and running (no programs yet, though!), and am starting to compile some programs now. I must say, now that I have installed it once (with your help), if I do it again it will actually go quite quickly.

We'll see how system maintenance goes!