Imminent Web Services

After I did a "emerge --sync" today, "emerge -pvuDN world" showed the following package conflict:

1. Update the local portage tree
   root# emerge --sync
2. Check for updates in the entire system.
   root# emerge -pvuDN world
   This is equivelant to
   root# emerge --pretend --verbose --update --deep --newuse world
3. If you are ok to update the entire system, do
   root# emerge -vuDN world
   Otherwise, you can choose to update only the packages you want, by doing "emerge -v package"
4. Check for packages that are not associated with any explicitly merged packages:
   

Say, you want to remove kernel 2.6.19-gentoo-r5, you should first remove the source and the compiled image:

root# rm -rf /usr/src/linux-2.6.19-gentoo-r5
root# rm -rf /boot/System.map-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5
root# rm -rf /boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5
root# rm -rf /lib/modules/2.6.19-gentoo-r5/

Then you would need to remove the entry for 2.6.19-gentoo-r5 in the GRUB menu:

root# vi /boot/grub/grub.conf

After I upgraded package www-servers/apache today, it gave me a message as follow:

 *  Selected default MPM: prefork
 *
 * Please note that you need SysV IPC support in your kernel.
 * Make sure CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y is set.

To check, cd to /usr/src/linix, and check the file .config for CONFIG_SYSVIPC value setting.

I did an auto upgrade on the Gentoo system today, which included upgrading grub. When it finished, it printed out a message:

 * *** IMPORTANT NOTE: you must run grub and install
 * the new version's stage1 to your MBR.  Until you do,
 * stage1 and stage2 will still be the old version, but
 * later stages will be the new version, which could
 * cause problems such as an unbootable system.

Install RoR 2.0

At this date, Ruby on Rails 2.0 is the latest greatest RoR, which is not available in Portage yet.

Ruby language

If you want to install the ruby from source, then download the source from http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/.

Or, you can use emerge:

# emerge -pv  dev-lang/ruby

On one of my Gentoo systems, the system date was off by 5 hours and some minutes. Adjusting the system date was only valid during that one boot up session. After the system was rebooted, the system date was off by 5+ hours again. Here is the fix:

# date MMDDHHMM
# hwclock -w
# rm /etc/adjtime
# hwclock -w

The command hwclock -w returned an error message "select() to /dev/rtc to wait for clock tick timed out". This would be the reason that the system refused the system date changes.

Install lighttpd and php

1. Read http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Lighttpd and decide which USE flags you will need. Write those flags into /etc/portage/package.use. Since I plan to use fastcgi and php, I do have at least these two flags set.
2. Check php installation. If php was installed but cgi USE flag was off, you have to reinstall php with "USE=cgi".
3. Now install lighttpd:
   # emerge -v lighttpd
4. Among the few opcode cache for php, xcache is quite stable on lighttpd. So install that:
   

This is a note for upgrading Gentoo kernel 2.6.19-gentoo-r5 to 2.6.24-gentoo-r3

Check package status

First of all, check the package status: