Planet Sabayon Linux

This script has been around since last year and is definitely worth talking about again. I mentioned it on the Sabayon Forum when it first came out to help people with unmasking, but it must of went over their heads as not many comments were not made about it. Since it’s release it has made it’s way into the official portage tree now. It’s fairly simple to use, don’t believe me, take a look at the help file.

root@wolf911:/home/wolfden # autounmask –h autounmask version 0.21 (using PortageXS-0.02.07 and portage-2.1.4.4) Usage: autounmask category/package-version Options: -h, –help : Show this help. -p, –pretend : Just pretend. -n, –noversions : Do not append version when unmasking a package.

It only has 3 switches to remember. Even I can remember those. So lets take an example of using the latest gnome. Gnome contains a lot of packages to unmask and well it would be impossible to guess all the packages. So we fire up autounmask and tell it to do it for us.

# autounmask gnome-base/gnome-2.20.0

It will now do it’s thing and edit the files for you. Once it gets done, all you need to do is:

# emerge -pv =gnome-base/gnome-2.22.0

I like to run versionless, which is really nice with all the new KDE 4 releases. I didn’t need to unmask 4.0.0, 4.0.1 and now 4.0.2. As they roll out, my world update grabs the packages.

# autounmask -n =kde-base/kde-meta-4.0.2

This works for any masked package in portage, single or multiple packages.

Where to start?

Entropy 0.13
There are two (or more?) things I forgot to mention in my last blog post about Entropy 0.13 codebase:

• Equo package suggestions: never forgotten a package name? I usually do. So, is this an issue regular expressions can solve? Of course yes. If you’ll write a wrong package name, equo will try to guess it, like Google does for searches!
  Example here: http://pastebin.fr/1295
• Socket Interface (aka the Entropy remote management service)
  • Pluggable commands support: there will be less than 10 built-in commands (aka, what you can do with a remote server) but you will just have to instantiate the SocketHostInterface class providing it extra commands. How? Just by creating a class like this: http://pastebin.fr/1294
  • Transparent SSL support: you can switch to SSL just by launching entropy-system-daemon with “–ssl”. Also, you’ll need a private key and a valid certificate and put them into /etc/entropy respectively named: socket_server.key and socket_server.crt
  • Commands policy: you can even decide to disable certain commands just by specifying them in socket.conf (/etc/entropy)

So I’m gonna tag this new version in 24 hours!

New server
We did it!! Its-new.nl is now powering our portal with an extraordinarily powerful dedicated server! They are our heroes, very kind, professionals and great great hard workers! So, if you need a dedicated, trust me, get one from them. Dutch people prefer going straight to the point, no hassles. We had a serious switching trouble, they solved it in a matter of hours. Another great thing is that they support Linux! So, isn’t there anything better? This new server really rocks!

micdah has come up with a really nice script for detailed information about a package’s USE flags. Thanks to his internet connection having problems and not being able to connect to certain websites to obtain information, he made a script to help make his life better and share it with us.

It’s up to you how and where you want to run this script, but here is micdah’s setup:

• # cd /opt/scripts/
• # wget http://www.micdah.dk/wp-content/usef.zip
• # unzip usef.zip
• # ln -s /opt/scripts/usef.sh /usr/bin/usef

Now that you have a symbolic link created you can simply:

usef gedit

Change the name to the package you want of course

Results

Thanks micdah

Gimme Wallpaper, or Gwall, is a small script to randomize and rotate your wallpapers, it is very fast and very clean ( as it is only a bash script ), I use it everyday now since it is so boring to have one single wallpaper all day long…

To install it, just download the installer script and run it (as your user not as root !!!), it will get all the requirement you need for Gwall…

To install the script follow this really simple instructions

$ wget -O GwallInstaller 'http://wael.nasreddine.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/wael/trunk/src/installers/GwallInstaller?view=co'
$ chmod +x GwallInstaller
$ ./GwallInstaller

And follow the instructions in the installer filer

Have a nice day

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Mad people following the SVN RSS of Entropy may have already noticed what I am writing about here below. A lot of new stuff is merging into TRUNK and I’m now here to share my excitement with you! Let’s start, here’s a quick list

• Dropped portageTools library in favor of SpmInterface class which loads a Gentoo-compatible package manager API class. In this way, we’ll be able to support other “backend” package managers such as paludis and pkgcore (by just reimplementing the existing PortageInterface class). No, Entropy does not use a Spm backend for actions handling (install,remove), so stop saying that. It uses Portage to spawn pkg_{pre,post}{inst,rm} phases and to update /var/db/pkg (vdb).
  So to speak, to get a Spm instance, just use: EquoInterface.Spm()
• Made updating repositories as user possible. This unlocked a lot of things, especially on the Notification Applet. Any user in the “entropy” group will be able to use it and run “equo update”. So, the applet will always keep your repositories updated.
  This made mandatory the need of having lock files, so I also had to implement them too.
• Moved tables PRIMARY KEYS to “INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT” (SQLite speaking), this will allow us to provide differential repository updates on demand. In fact, EAPI=3 (as in Entropy API revision 3), will need a (server side) web service which will handle updates requests. Client will tell Server: “hey I have revision 30, gimme the latest”, Server will answer: “here it is a SQL, run it and you’ll be fine”. As usual, if an EAPI step will fail, Entropy will automatically fall back to “current EAPI” minus 1 (technically SPEAKING! Lol). So, if EAPI=3 fails, EAPI=2 will be used and so forth down to 0.
  Anyway, this is probably Entropy 0.14 stuff, but will have the “side” effect to reduce bandwidth and the needed time for users to update repositories.
• Server Socket Interface: this still needs policy handling and more supported commands, apart from this, it’s really really a cool thing. This is probably one of the first cool things that will land into the Entropy codebase. Imagine to have 20-30 computers and you need to control updates remotely or install/remove stuff. Imagine to have an issue which involves packages and you are competely a n00b, you will be able to “press” a “Help ME!” button on Spritz and allow friends to connect and fix things for you. Isn’t that enough to start screaming? Eheh
• Caching, this affects Spritz directly. I’ve really improved caching speed and general management, allowing Entropy to not trash it every now and then, so (again) to speak. Yes, Spritz will get faster and faster.
• Improved database indexes, after hours of benchmarks and mostly thanks to Michele, we’ve been able to remove useless SQL indexes and just keeping the good ones. Have you ever noticed a lag between Equo’s fetch and install steps? Well, it’s gone, completely. Cool, huh?

So, things in the TODO are still a lot, and we need YOU, Python/SQL experts!
I plan to tag Entropy 0.13 as soon as possible and start (eventually) the second refactoring, this time, server side codebase (Entropy 0.14)

Anyway, we’ll have a server migration probably tonight, OpenVZ will allow us to do it seamlessly but new DNS will have be propagated anyway (read PLEASE BE KIND AND PATIENT ).

I’ve never seriously give enlightenment a serious look before, but you can’t help but wonder with everyone talking about e17 to take a look at it. Nobody seems interested in e16 and e17 has been in production for as long as I can remember it seems like. Maybe some year they will release a stable version. I will go through a howto install e17 on Sabayon Linux

Thanks to bearbonez on the Sabayon Linux forum for providing the links to get one started in the right direction. The first thing we need to do is create a folder in your home directory, I called mine e17.

1. Open terminal or konsole, should be in your home directory and use $ mkdir e17
2. $ cd e17
3. $ wget http://omicron.homeip.net/projects/easy_e17/easy_e17.sh
4. now we need to change to root in terminal/konsole so su and enter your root password
5. # chmod +x easy_e17.sh
6. Now before we run the script, make sure you have libmpd installed first, if not:: # emerge media-libs/libmpd
7. than continue as normal
8. # ./easy_e17.sh -i let it do it’s thing – this will take some time to perform. You will get a message when it is done.

It took me about hour and half to compile all those packages, they go quickly. After that I was faced with how to get it to work with gdm/kdm. The solution:

1. # nano /usr/share/xsessions/e17.desktop
   • add the following:
   • [Desktop Entry]
     Encoding=UTF-8
     Name=e17
     Comment=Log into e17
     Exec=/opt/e17/bin/enlightenment_start
     TryExec=/opt/e17/bin/enlightenment_start
     Type=Application
     Icon=/opt/e17/share/enlightenment/data/images/enlightenment.png
2. Save and close the file
3. #/etc/init.d/xdm restart
4. Under Session manager on your GDM or KDM login select e17

An Alternative is to use entrance which will replace your GDM or KDM and is actually pretty nice, you just need to add DISPLAYMANAGER=”entrance” to /etc/rc.conf It’s your choice

To keep yourself updated just run # ./easy_e17.sh -u

I found it very easy to work with, just got to explorer a bit to find the stuff. It’s easier to configure than fluxbox and has more eye candy than fluxbox. It does animated backgrounds OTB and you can even download animated backgrounds through the background configuration. I can still run my gnome applications and kde applications in it. There is even a way to get compiz-fusion working with it. You can even grab themes for it also.

I’ve started a new category where I’ll be posting a screenshots of my desktop everytime I change it…

This is Gnome 2.20.3, with compiz-fusion… Gnome panel are replaced with AWN (Avant Window Manager) you can see my Tutorial on how to replace it…

Wallpaper: 1280×800

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Good Morning

Today I stumbled upon a very interesting panel, The Avant Window Navigator, it is like the Mac OS X panel, 3D, Buttons bounce, flip, glow etc… It is very pretty and it replaces every widget we have ever used…

The Avant panel can’t operate without compiz, so first you need to install compiz, there is plenty of articles around the net, just search for an article that works for your distribution, once that’s done and tested you should install the AVN…

Now you should remove all Gnome panel, just follow this tutorial, don’t forget to add AVN to your session.

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This is merely a TIP, but It’s very usefull, if, for some reason, you would like to get rid of all gnome panels but you don’t wish to lose what gnome-panel offers with it then this is your answer…

First off, here’s a Screenshot to show you what I’m talking about.

We don’t really remove the Panels, we just hide them, so start off by removing all panels, you’ll have one panel left that you can’t remove so do the following:

Open Gconf-editor and goto to /apps/panel/toplevels and set these values:
auto_hide: yes
auto_hide_size: 1
expand: no
hide_delay: 1
monitor: 3
unhide_delay: 10000
x: 10000
y: 10000

Source

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Since I have been hanging out over at the archlinux forum and seeing their monthly screenshots, I have always liked it when they use a really neat little script to take their screenshots. So I dug around and found the script and changed it to add SabayonLinux to it. Take a peek below and I will explain how to do it.

See how neat that is? It displays all your info so people don’t have to ask what theme you are using or icons etc. I made two different ascii art pics. I’m not an ascii artists so if someone can improve upon the ascii art, by all means do it and let me know.

This is how you do it. First a script needs to be downloaded -I zipped the two files use the one of your choice. Right click on the link and choose save as to save it. You can name them anything you want, just make sure the .pl stays. Now what I did in my home directory is created a folder called bin mkdir /home/username/bin and I put the file into that folder. Replace the username with your actual user name btw. Now you don’t have to use it for screenshots either if you don’t want too, on line 17 of the script you can change my $shot = 0; to my $shot = 1; and than it won’t take a screenshot but still display. Line 19 you can change the time delay. Note you will need scrot installed to do this, so emerge scrot if you don’t have it.

Ok, so you made a folder called bin in your home directory and have the file in there. You have installed scrot and ready to go. I will use the file name info3.pl, but if you changed the name you will substitute the name in the command to the one you gave it. Open up terminal or konsole and issue the command as a normal user perl /home/username/bin/info3.pl and it should display and take a snapshot, remember your delay! You snapshot will be found in your newly created bin folder. How is that for organization?

Now next time you participate in a monthly screenshot thread, you can show off.

I take no credit for this script. I did not create it, only added to it.