gentoo/GENERAL.md

#General Gentoo maintainance

Checking for updates

Sync with Gentoo's servers, and then see what updates there are:

emerge --sync && emerge -pv --update world

To install available updates:

emerge --update world

Starting / Restarting Services

Gentoo services have init files in the /etc/init.d/ directory.

• To start a service: /etc/init.d/[service] start

• To restart a service: /etc/init.d/[service] restart

• To stop a service: /etc/init.d/[service] stop

• Common services

  mysqld - mysql

  php-fpm - php with fpm

  lighttpd - lighttpd web server

Installing software

Generally, all there is to installing addtional software is

emerge [software]

But sometimes you don't know the package name, or if it exists, so you want to search:

emerge --search [software]

And it's a good idea to see what packages will be installed, without actually installing it

emerge -pv [software]

• If the sofware you are trying to install is masked, you can add the software to the package.keywords file in /etc/portage/. If the file doesn't exist, you can create it. Each package added to the file looks like this: [category]/[software] ~amd64 or if you are using a 32-bit version, [category]/[software] ~x86

• If the software doesn't have the USE settings it needs, for example if php doesn't have mysql support, you can add these to the package.use file in /etc/portage :

dev-lang/php mysql