Re: [gentoo-user] Re: emerge world looking grim

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:46 AM, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Harry. Gentoo has the handbook for it's main install. A bit of a drag
> but good for for a refresher or leaning.
>
> Rich put up an excellent set of VM gentoo install instructins [1]:

My main goals with those notes (I wouldn't call them instructions at
this point) were to cover:
1.  Btrfs raid1, which many seemed to be struggling with.
2.  dracut, which many also seemed to be struggling with.
3.  Integrated systemd+openrc instructions.  I found that the
differences were actually very minor in my guide, while the
distinction seems much bigger in the handbook.

My next steps are to clean this all up into a blog article (less
notes, more actual instructions), and then probably merge these into
the handbook.  The latter will take a bit more effort as I don't want
to be disruptive, but I think that some of our defaults are outdated.
In particular I really think the handbook should present dracut as the
mainstream initramfs solution and genkernel's initramfs as an
alternative.  I have no issues with using genkernel to build a kernel,
though you'd need to use the option to run menuconfig and pick your
init.

I'm not proposing making systemd the default.  If you follow the guide
in the order I've written it using systemd vs openrc really doesn't
change much at all besides what profile you use, your kernel settings,
and one line in your grub config.  And that was a big part of why I
wrote this guide.  My hunch from numerous container installs is that a
streamlined systemd install looks almost the same as an openrc install
and by merging the instructions you can make either path easy to
follow while leaving all the choice in the hands of the user.  The
main challenge I see with integrating systemd as the numerous places
where the instructions have you run rc-update and instead you'd need
systemctl enable.  It is a trivial change, but my main concern is
doing it in a way that doesn't add confusion or bloat.  Many distros
actually use a wrapper of some kind so that they can have one
procedure for either, but I don't care for that.  One of the things I
really like about Gentoo is that we stick to upstream and don't do
what Debian does like wrap systemd wrappers around bash init scripts.

In any case, the notes as they currently stand are not something I'd
recommend to a new user.  They're fine for experienced users looking
for the "short version."  When I get them integrated into the handbook
I think it will be an overall improvement and usable for new users.

-- 
Rich