User:Maffblaster/Experiments

Bad ideas from my Gentoo laboratory.

Overriding Genkernel package (GKPKG) versions

On occasion a genkernel package (prefixed with GKPKG) will fail to build, resulting in errors such as the following:

root #genkernel all

* ERROR: Command 'make' failed!
* ERROR: create_initramfs(): append_data(): append_util-linux(): populate_binpkg(): gkbuild(): Failed to create binpkg of util-linux-2.39.3!
* Please consult '/var/log/genkernel.log' for more information and any
* errors that were reported above.
* 
* Report any genkernel bugs to bugs.gentoo.org and
* assign your bug to genkernel@gentoo.org. Please include
* as much information as you can in your bug report; attaching
* '/var/log/genkernel.log' so that your issue can be dealt with effectively.
* 
* Please do *not* report kernel compilation failures as genkernel bugs!
*

In this instance, genkernel's struggle was because the system's default ruby interpreter was not properly after an upgrade, which is a sysadmin error, however it proves a useful example for selecting a later version of package genkernel will build as part of the initramfs environment.

If left undefined, which the default condition, genkernel will source a static value package version from the /usr/share/genkernel/defaults/software.sh file. It will also source specific build functions for each relevant binpkg from the /usr/share/genkernel/gkbuilds/ directory.

To use a more recent version of the sys-apps/util-linux package, copy the util-linux tarfile to genkernel's distfile directory (/usr/share/genkernel/distfiles/) by default), then add the following to /etc/genkernel.conf and rerun the initramfs build:

root #cp --verbose /var/cache/distfiles/util-linux-2.41.tar.xz /usr/share/genkernel/distfiles

'/var/cache/distfiles/util-linux-2.41.tar.xz' -> '/usr/share/genkernel/distfiles/util-linux-2.41.tar.xz'

Next run genkernel by defining the package version for the newly availalbe tar file:

root #GKPKG_UTIL_LINUX_PV=2.41 genkernel initramfs

Alterantively, custom static values for the gkbuild system may be set in the /etc/genkernel.conf file so that they do not need passed on the commandline each time:

FILE /etc/genkernelExample of defining a specific package version for util-linux

# Force genkernel to build sys-apps/util-linux-2.41
GKPKG_UTIL_LINUX_PV=2.41 # Alternative place to define a specific GKPKG version.
GKPKG_UTIL_LINUX_SRCTAR="$(portageq distdir)/util-linux-${GKPKG_UTIL_LINUX_PV}.tar.xz" # Instructs genkernel to look in the default distfiles directory for the source tarfile. This avoids the file copy step and is simpiler if the distfile exists. Note that if the file suffix or the package name ever changes, this line will need updated accordingly!

At the end of the day, this still requires a custom /usr/share/genkernel/gkbuilds/util-linux-2.41.gkbuild file, since configure step breaks on newer versions:

FILE /usr/share/genkernel/gkbuilds/util-linux-2.41.gkbuild

# ...


# ...

Services on Gentoo on Xen on RPI

Set it up.

Portage package changelog news reader thing

Software that will monitor changelogs, news, README, etc. on a per package basis and provide those changes to system admins.

For example, WireGuard support was just added to NetworkManager's nmtui interface. This is visible in in the NEWS file (the ChangeLog file seems abandoned since 2008).

This could potentially be handled in an eselect package news or even a GLEP ultimately, since each project's changelogs may be a slightly different file, and on package upgrades it would seem one of the only sane ways of dealing with the new parts is to diff the newly added text and display that in a viewer. The ebuild could define which file Portage should 'watch' for news updates, then diffs of that file could be tracked by enabling a specific Portage feature FEATURES="package-news" or some such thing.

Package build time calculator

Write code that will determine how long it takes a system to build a package, including the sum of all dependencies back to (and including) the toolchain. Think recursive qlop.

Uninstall unused packages and/or programs

Research:

The Android (at least v12) has a few nice features that are helpful to manage privacy risk via app permissions and manage disk space. The OS will routinely collect information on the frequency of how often an application is used and, if not accessed by the user, restrict privileges to the application. It also will deactivate applications that are not used in a certain time window, although it does not seem to recommend they be uninstalled to free up disk space. It would be nice to have a similar feature on Linux systems: something that can show the last time a user (root included?) accessed/ran binaries from certain packages. There may be existing projects (QUBES?) like this already that provide the same or similar features.

make localmodconfig test

Test make localmodconfig on a bloated kernel. See if it boots properly...

Ghost kernel

May be fun and challenging pproject to try to get more userspace processes running on Ghost kernel.

https://ghostkernel.org/about

Shields

https://shields.io/

picolibc

Keith Packard's picolibc - How to replace glibc with picolibc. See https://github.com/keith-packard/picolibc

Clonezilla

Disk backup:

root #/sbin/ocs-sr -q2 -c -j2 -gm -gs -z2p -i 4096 -fsck-y -senc -p choose savedisk <YYYY-MM-DD>-img nvme0n1

Disk restore:

Ubuntu kernel configs

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/config

Phabricator

https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/

Root file system on NFS

Hmmm...

CONFIG_ROOT_NFS
- /usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/nfs/nfsroot.txt

Prefix under cygwin

Does Gentoo run under cygwin on Windows? This article seems to say it works...

Manual bootstrapping: User:Maffblaster/Drafts/Prefix_Cygwin

Funtoo

Install Funtoo.

VMs

KVM/QEMU

Placeholder for commands I use to create VMs (testing).