How do people use Gentoo templates?

User Support
1

Hello :wave:

As a regular Gentoo user, I never had much success with the Gentoo community templates. When I try to update them, I encountered various cases that always ended in a broken system (different python 3 version, slot issues, upgrading everything and qubes agent stopped working etcā€¦).

So Iā€™m curious, how do people install software and keep the gentoo template up to date without breaking it? :sweat_smile:

2

I stopped trying to use emerge, and only use qubes update.
Nowhere near as thorough, but it doesnā€™t mess things up.

3

To update:
sudo emerge --sync
To install i2pd 2.46.1 which goes through Tor (you can also torrent with independent i2psnark if you have a guix pack openjdk (in guix OS: guix pack -S -RR sbin/bla/bla/bla openjdk)
sudo echco ā€œnet-vpn/i2pdā€ >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
sudo emerge --ask net-vpn/i2pd

i2pplus works tits alsoā€¦

I have Waterfox and Tor blaā€¦blaā€¦blaā€¦
I did not install Tribler or did any streaming yet but overall is an OK template. Has problems as a system template, firewalls etc. Iā€™ve been using it for over a year. Donā€™t get hung up with things that donā€™t work and use the things that do.

Unlike other things in Qubes that drive me nuts and I remember some Polak choice insults or dumb Polak jokes, I remain calm. It does have a calming effect.

4

Run gentoo back when it come out and i loved the detailed howtoā€™s, learned many things back then but you have to keep rolling the updates timely or the system / dependencies will brake is what i experienced. Figuring that out is time consuming. Lots has probably changed since then 20+ years.

Nowadays if i would run gentoo, iā€™d use it on zfs with snapshots and rollback if such a case would occur. My guess you could clone / backup the qube before updates?

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5

Without breaking it? No I break it :fire: then :firefighter: .

With Qubes-OS 4.1, I use the gentoo minimal template with

  1. the Qubes-OS repository [1]
  2. a daily update with emerge
  3. a weekly clone as a hot backup
  4. a weekly qubes-backup (template + cloned template) as a cold backup

I follow :

  1. the qubes-gentoo commits
  2. the qubes-gentoo issues
  3. the gentoo related forum topics
  4. the qubes-issues with the Gentoo label

When I find a problem, I analyze it and if itā€™s Qubes-OS related I create a qubes-gentoo issue or I add a comment to an existing issue. Keep in mind, itā€™s a community template with the problems solved by the community and the great help from FrĆ©dĆ©ric Pierret.

My template is 2-year old :crossed_fingers:, I broke it ~5 times but each time I restored my template with my hot backup and solved the problems.

[1] Now, the template should include the Qubes-OS repository (I didnā€™t check). See the --branch option !

user@tpl-g-min ~ $ cat /etc/portage/repos.conf/qubes.conf 
[qubes]
location = /var/db/repos/qubes
sync-uri = https://github.com/fepitre/qubes-gentoo.git
sync-type = git
sync-git-verify-commit-signature = true
sync-openpgp-key-path = /usr/share/openpgp-keys/9FA64B92F95E706BF28E2CA6484010B5CDC576E2.asc
sync-openpgp-key-refresh = false
auto-sync = yes
sync-git-clone-extra-opts = --branch release4.1
sync-git-pull-extra-opts = release4.1
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