Thanks a lot for your help Martin. ;)
As I said in previous replies, the only problem I face keeping me from
moving to kernel 2.6 is its un-bootable size for sparc32.

If there is a user running a 2.6 kernel on a sparcstation5 or the like,
I would appreciate it if he can post his .config.

Aggelos.

on 09/18/2007 12:11 AM Dereck Martin wrote the following:
> Like I said before, I highly recommend you just use the latest profile
> for the sparc it will give you a 2.6 kernel and such.  I don't know the
> reasons why you still need a 2.4 kernel, but if you do still need it
> here is how I would go about setting up a overlay for an older profile.
> 
> with an overlay, an emerge --sync doesn't wipe out the profiles or
> packages so it remains in a static state.
> 
> I also highly recommend you read the documentation for creating and
> managing ebuilds.  Chances are you will need to do "ebuild
> filename.ebuild digest" and some other things when doing this method.
> 
> I also for warn that this is probably not a desirable method, but if you
> really want to keep your system in a old profile that isn't maintained
> it is about the only way to do so.
> 
> Well if you are looking to preserve an older profile like the recently
> removed 2006.0 profile, you have to get a portage snapshot of a 2006.0
> profile.
> 
> Most of the mirrors have removed the 2006.0 profile, but some haven't
> yet.  A good example would be
> 
> 
> http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo/releases/snapshots/2006.0/portage-20060123.tar.bz2
> 
> Download that portage snapshot and perform the following commands
> 
> cd /usr/local
> mkdir portage
> mv /dir-to-downloaded-snapshot/portage-20060123.tar.bz2 .
> tar xjf portage-20060123.tar.bz2
> 
> this will create a portage structure in /usr/local/portage what gentoo
> calls a portage overlay.
> 
> Then  echo PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" >> /etc/make.conf
> 
> This will tell portage to recognize the overlay when using emerge and
> stuff.
> 
> Then create a symlink to the 2006.0 profile in the
> /usr/local/portage/profiles directory instead of the regular
> /usr/portage/profiles
> 
> So it would be like this
> 
> rm /etc/make.profile
> ln -s /usr/local/portage/profiles/<path to profile> /etc/make.profile
> 
> The only draw back is when you try to emerge certain apps that have been
> completely removed form the current portage distfiles you'll have to
> find the file else where and place it in the distfiles your self.  This
> is common for patches and such.  Most of the time the ebuild has various
> locations to retrieve the file, and you will have to cross your fingers
> and hope it is in one of the locations.  =)
> 
> I recommend scouring the gentoo SVN and looking at all ebuild files
> including the deleted ones and downloading the required patches by hand
> found in the "files" directory of the application package you are
> wanting. You will need to do this if an ebuild is unmaintained, like in
> the instance of openMosix
> 
> In writing this i noticed that the sparc32 2006.1 profile has a 2.4
> kernel profile.  So you should be good to go at least until next year
> probably.  Make sure you /etc/make.profile is linked to that profile
> first and if it is not then you might resolve a lot of problems by doing
> that.
> 
> A lot of people do this on a per application basis.  Like my self.  I
> basically just do this for openMosix and delete all the other data out
> of the portage overlay except the openMosix stuff and the profile.
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