Mailing List Archive

emerge failure revisited
A couple weeks ago, I reported that emerge gentoo-sources was failing.
It magically worked once, so I quit yapping.

This was in the context of a fresh install, from the Gentoo CD boot.
The fix seems to be enabling a swap device, which I don't think is in
the instructions.

It was a fluke that I came to this conclusion, but it works.
I switched to a second PWS500 (almost identical) to eliminate crazy
hardware as a possibility.
I didn't think portage/emerge was such a hog that 256MB RAM was too
little. BTW, my first machine had 384MB.

I'm not going to formally report this as a bug, but I think something is
wrong. Maybe it only affects weakling Alphas like mine?
I don't follow the alternative architectures forum. Maybe if someone
shows up there with this problem, you can suggest swapon.

Adios, DW
Re: emerge failure revisited [ In reply to ]
On 07/11/13 04:41, Don Wilburn wrote:
> A couple weeks ago, I reported that emerge gentoo-sources was failing.
> It magically worked once, so I quit yapping.
>
> This was in the context of a fresh install, from the Gentoo CD boot.
> The fix seems to be enabling a swap device, which I don't think is in
> the instructions.
>
> It was a fluke that I came to this conclusion, but it works.
> I switched to a second PWS500 (almost identical) to eliminate crazy
> hardware as a possibility.
> I didn't think portage/emerge was such a hog that 256MB RAM was too
> little. BTW, my first machine had 384MB.
>
> I'm not going to formally report this as a bug, but I think something
> is wrong. Maybe it only affects weakling Alphas like mine?
> I don't follow the alternative architectures forum. Maybe if someone
> shows up there with this problem, you can suggest swapon.
>
> Adios, DW
>
I haven't seen any error messages, but in today's world, it's really a
good idea to run GCC with at least 1GB of (virtual) memory. My alpha
has 512MB, so I make sure that my swap is 2GB. I strongly recommend you
do likewise, disk space permitting.

--
Andrew
Re: emerge failure revisited [ In reply to ]
On 7/11/2013 9:37 AM, Andrew Gaylard wrote:
> 2GB. I strongly recommend you do likewise, disk space permitting.
My swap partition is 1GB, as recommended by the handbook. But, I have
space to waste, so I'll see about revising that. Thanks.

Consider that this was a fresh install from CD. No swap file is added
automatically, and nothing tells you to do it manually.

My first install was circa April. I didn't think it was a big deal to
erase it and start over, but I'm struggling to get back as far again.

Adios, DW
Re: emerge failure revisited [ In reply to ]
On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Don Wilburn <bodhisattva@gt.rr.com> wrote:
> This was in the context of a fresh install, from the Gentoo CD boot.
> The fix seems to be enabling a swap device, which I don't think is in the
> instructions.

It is: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-alpha.xml?part=1&chap=4

256 MB is much too little to compile things.
Re: emerge failure revisited [ In reply to ]
On 7/20/2013 11:10 PM, Matt Turner wrote:
>> I don't think is in the
>> >instructions.
> It is:

Thanks for checking up on me.

Shame on me for missing it. It's right after the part about alternative
filesystems, like, ahem, JFS...

I still think it would be nice to have those rudimentary JFS tools on a
boot cd. Mr. Klausman has marked them stable for alpha.

Adios, DW