Questions/Comments -- modules, dependancies, and misc

nocain · 2005-02-11 22:20:32

ok been awhile since I used arch probably around the .4 release, anyway I installed it on one of my machines and here is what I am running into.

first( because it is easiest ) dependancies have reached the point of being crazy, you have stuff marked as being a dependancy that is not needed at all for the package to run, I'd give some examples but can't remember was a week ago when I went throught the install and configure. Point a dependancy should only be something that is REQUIRED for the program to compile, if it is not required it should not be a dependancy, I installed kde-games, kdeedu kdetoys, eclipse, firefox, openoffice, lynx, xorg, enlightenment, javasdk, and a few other packages, none of which require cups or gnome, for some reason I wound up with cups, and a bunch of gnome packages, as well as a bunch of other packages that I KNOW for a fact are not required for anything that I told it to load, as I have built EVERYTHING that I put on the system by hand befor. This is out of hand, to give you an idea I put arch on another system( base install ) and compiled/put on everything that I had used pacman to put on the other system, the diffrence about 1Gb of space wasted on crap I didn't want didn't need, If I wanted all that stuff I would have thrown in a knoppix disk and installed it. Ok that be enough of that.

Next, modules. since when did arch start doing the auto detect every peice of hardware in your machine? I am not to fond of this as I think it is loading a bunch of stuff that is not needed or incorrect, granted I have not set up a system with the 2.6 kernel befor, however I have never seen this many modules loaded on my system befor, there are over 25 modules loading, I know some are incorrect, I know I don't need a bunch of them, ie the game port on my sound blaster live. Same machine with the .4 version or just about any other distro I have used on it, mainly slackware I only wind up with about 12-15 modules loaded, I would rather it not auto probe and load modules that are not required to load up the system and connect to the internet, I would rather tell it to load the modules myself. That is how I recall the devs around here liked it being handled. MAybe have it only probe for the needed modules to get it to boot and connect to the internet, then have an option in the installer for a deep probe.

And misc stuff.

find is borked may be filesystem related doing a find -name "something" starts working then bails out in the search with some error relating to the file system, once I bring back up my system I will put it in( I'm on my brothers machine right now )

locate does not work after installation till after running updatedb, that should be created after install IMHO

more misc stuff I will throw on here after I get back on my system and remember what else

My main complaint is that the distro seems to be 180'ing from the direction that it was heading in about a 1.5 years ago, which was to be a power user distro that let you handle the system, stable reliable and not bloated....... Now I'm just waiting for the wizard based menu installer and for it to drop you off after the install in KDE.

How do you brows back in the forum, I would love to pull posts from the devs in mid 2003 that would contradict how things are becoming

skoal · 2005-02-11 22:43:07

Any problems you're experiencing with "find" or any other recursive based app from the "coreutils" package can be an indication of a really messed up filesystem, in dire need of "fsck" attention. I ran into that problem the other day by using "du -sb <path>".

As far as using "updatedb" before "locate", that's always been the normal m.o. for me. I prefer it that way so I can trim out directories from the "db" I don't want included.

I've had "gnome" libs stuff pop up in my "/opt" path every so often too unexpectadly. When I find the offending package that put it there, I no longer use it and find an alternative.

phrakture · 2005-02-11 22:45:05

ok about (a), the dependancies are a bit out of hand, but that's what "pacman -d" was made for... just ignore the deps... I know gnome-vfs doesn't like me, so I removed it while ignoring deps...
but I still agree - i posted a feature request a while ago for an "optionaldepends" argument to the PKGBUILDS. however you did install KDE which is known bloat... and I seriously doubt you downloaded an extra gig of packages.... that would have taken a day...

now on to the fun stuff:
b) loading modules has nothing to do with arch... arch will only load the modules you specified in the MODULES array. Also, if you're talking sound modules... that's called ALSA. Don't want all the modules floating around on boot? Remove hotplug - hotplug is what loads those modules... not Arch.

c) if find gives you a "filesystem" error, you should probably run through a good old fsck... disks may be bad

d) you complain about "auto" this and "auto" that when it comes to package features and modules, but something as simple as updatedb you want automatically run? which way is it? you want stuff done for you or not?

don't act all high and mighty with your "god I totally used arch way back when... let me get some posts..." We've all been here for a while, so stop with the "I found it before you" attitude (...god, Blink 182 was totally like way cooler before they were on the radio....).

And for the record "building everything on my system" and "running gentoo" are two different things... you got them confused...

sarah31 · 2005-02-12 02:38:46

nocain wrote:

ok been awhile since I used arch probably around the .4 release, anyway I installed it on one of my machines and here is what I am running into.
first( because it is easiest ) dependancies have reached the point of being crazy, you have stuff marked as being a dependancy that is not needed at all for the package to run, I'd give some examples but can't remember was a week ago when I went throught the install and configure. Point a dependancy should only be something that is REQUIRED for the program to compile, if it is not required it should not be a dependancy, I installed kde-games, kdeedu kdetoys, eclipse, firefox, openoffice, lynx, xorg, enlightenment, javasdk, and a few other packages, none of which require cups or gnome, for some reason I wound up with cups, and a bunch of gnome packages, as well as a bunch of other packages that I KNOW for a fact are not required for anything that I told it to load, as I have built EVERYTHING that I put on the system by hand befor. This is out of hand, to give you an idea I put arch on another system( base install ) and compiled/put on everything that I had used pacman to put on the other system, the diffrence about 1Gb of space wasted on crap I didn't want didn't need, If I wanted all that stuff I would have thrown in a knoppix disk and installed it. Ok that be enough of that.

I note here that you installed KDE stuff. KDE is built with extra bloat but I think one of the reasons all the extra stuff is there was becaus ebuilding is a very time consuming process and in such cases it is often better to err on the side of bloat rather than continually rebuild.

That being said there are options as mention in other posts of installing desired packages without the extras. You can also find out with a little searching or building to find out if the extra packages that are added are truly modular. Modular means that the program can and will function normally with out the support package until you want that feature. If these extras are modular then you can feature request them to be built in as modular and the maintainers can then alert the community of the modulairity and how such features can be enabled. Commonly packages are bloated because the maintainer may not be aware that they are modular in nature.

Beyond this you should really swim upstream and request that the KDE developers start making their software features modular. That is something beyond the control of Arch's development team.

I can relate to your problem but in the case of lengthy builds such as KDE I can completely understand the mainatainers bloating it rather than stripping it and facing even harsher criticism.

Next, modules. since when did arch start doing the auto detect every peice of hardware in your machine? I am not to fond of this as I think it is loading a bunch of stuff that is not needed or incorrect, granted I have not set up a system with the 2.6 kernel befor, however I have never seen this many modules loaded on my system befor, there are over 25 modules loading, I know some are incorrect, I know I don't need a bunch of them, ie the game port on my sound blaster live. Same machine with the .4 version or just about any other distro I have used on it, mainly slackware I only wind up with about 12-15 modules loaded, I would rather it not auto probe and load modules that are not required to load up the system and connect to the internet, I would rather tell it to load the modules myself. That is how I recall the devs around here liked it being handled. MAybe have it only probe for the needed modules to get it to boot and connect to the internet, then have an option in the installer for a deep probe.

Obviously you have the hotplug daemon running and didn't know it (it is enabled by default in the daemons array). You should really read up on the daemons that are enable by default in your rc.conf.

As for the sound. That is the nature of the ALSA modules .... loading you module drags in all of the modules which your card supports whether you want them or not. You probably can control this somehow but let it be known it is not an Arch thing.

find is borked may be filesystem related doing a find -name "something" starts working then bails out in the search with some error relating to the file system, once I bring back up my system I will put it in( I'm on my brothers machine right now )

Sounds bad for you but your hardware problems is not an Arch problem.

locate does not work after installation till after running updatedb, that should be created after install IMHO

like mentioned above. Auto or no auto features which do you want?

more misc stuff I will throw on here after I get back on my system and remember what else

My main complaint is that the distro seems to be 180'ing from the direction that it was heading in about a 1.5 years ago, which was to be a power user distro that let you handle the system, stable reliable and not bloated....... Now I'm just waiting for the wizard based menu installer and for it to drop you off after the install in KDE.

There have been no philosophical changes. Some packages have become bloated but that is the decision of the maintainer based on requests. If the community wants more features then why should the maintainers not fulfill their request?

How do you brows back in the forum, I would love to pull posts from the devs in mid 2003 that would contradict how things are becoming

Use the search feature. You can do can do a keyword search or by username. But do you really want to go on a huge trolling tirade when you could either email the maintainers and find out why they have done certain things and see if it can be changed or talk with the upstream developers about how their old school programming is bloating the downstream product.

If you are really that discouraged with Arch there are alot of other distros out there that may appease you. Mind you I would much prefer that you actually channel your frustration into something positive.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-02-11 22:20:32

Questions/Comments -- modules, dependancies, and misc

#2 2005-02-11 22:43:07

Re: Questions/Comments -- modules, dependancies, and misc

#3 2005-02-11 22:45:05

Re: Questions/Comments -- modules, dependancies, and misc

#4 2005-02-12 02:38:46

Re: Questions/Comments -- modules, dependancies, and misc

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