[vox-tech] emergency: please help. /lib keeps disappearing

[Daniel Hurt]

Issac Trotts wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 09:08:39AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 
>>On Wed 26 May 04,  8:48 AM, Issac Trotts <ijtrotts@ucdavis.edu> said:
>>
>>>On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 06:52:22AM -0700, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>>Good.  Now I begin to recover packages.  I don't know how to get a list
>>>>of all packages that install files in /lib, so I do the only thing I
>>>>know how to do:
>>>>
>>>>   COLUMNS=255 dpkg -l "*" | grep -v 'description'
>>>>      | awk '{ print $2 }' > recover.sh
>>>>
>>>>which gives me a list of all installed packages.  BTW, if anybody knows
>>>>how to generate a list of all packages which have files in /lib, I'd
>>>>like to know.
>>>
>>>(for i in $(dpkg -l '*'|grep -v description|awk '{print $2}'); do  
>>>    if dpkg -L $i | grep '^/lib/' > /dev/null ; then 
>>>        echo $i 
>>>    fi 
>>>done) | less
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>>That's about the only thing I can think of to try (other than installing
>>>>Gentoo which I've been thinking about for a few weeks now).
>>>
>>>Is there a reason to think Gentoo would have fewer problems than Debian?
>>
>>thx, by the way!   :-)
> 
> 
> No prob!  :o)
> 
> 
>>at some point during the history of this machine, a number of problems
>>developed with X:
>>
> 
> [...]
> 
>>they didn't happen all at once.  it's been incremental, as X got
>>updated and ran the course of a couple of years.
> 
> 
> Well, that's no fun.  I've only used Debian for a couple of years,
> but have installed it on maybe 8 boxes so far.  The slowdown hasn't
> happened to me yet...
> 
> 
>>when i use a live CD, like knoppix, these problems go away.  i believe
>>these are compilation / packaging issues.  i'd like to see if compiling
>>everything from scratch fixes them.  i just booted knoppix for the first
>>time a few weeks ago, and the difference between X on my hard drive and
>>X on knoppix was startling.
> 
> 
> I wonder if there's a way to get a blend between knoppix and hard-drive
> based installation.  It would be nice to be able to save files and
> keep programs around that become available...
> 
> 
>>i realize that you can certainly compile your own on debian, but from
>>what i've read about gentoo, the whole concept appeals to me.
> 
> 
> One thing that's been keeping me from using gentoo is that I'm worried
> that installing packages will take way longer than with Debian.
> Are there binary i686 or i386 versions of most of the packages?
> 

For most of the packages and most of the architectures there are binary 
versions available from the "Live CDs" and package CD's:

ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/releases/x86/2004.1/

They update those about once a quarter.  I think that they are also 
starting to mirror them on line as well, but I am not sure where I read 
that.

Half the fun of Gentoo is being able to build an OS from scratch that is 
exactly tailored the way that you want it and as fully optimized as it 
can be.  To install everything from scratch takes about 8-12 hours of 
compile time for me (including xorg-x11).  That is excluding ridiculous 
builds like OpenOffice that take a day by themselves.  But if you have 
computers that have similar architecture you can compile on one and then 
distribute to all the others.

I even used my Intel laptop to build all the packages system packages 
for my Athlon.  I did not optimize them too much but it worked fine, and 
I have recompiled all the packages.  The emerge system for installing 
packages has some flaws, but I am VERY impressed with the flexibility it 
has in it :-)

Dan


> Issac
>