Gentoo on Kenno's Open Note

Auto Connect to Hidden Wifi With Networkmanger

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 22:00:21 +1100

If you’re here to find out how to setup network connection to hidden wifi access point, you might want to check this post: How to Connect to Hidden Wifi Using nmcli instead.

This post documents how I fix an issue of wifi connection on a laptop running Gentoo to a hidden access point. The problem is that the wifi connection doesn’t automatically connect despite I’ve set the autoconnect.connection yes.

❯ nmcli con show CamBlue | grep -i autoconnect
connection.autoconnect:                 yes
connection.autoconnect-priority:        0
connection.autoconnect-retries:         -1 (default)
connection.autoconnect-slaves:          -1 (default)

I don’t remember having done anything special on the Fedora laptops connecting to the same the network; and this problem didn’t exit on any of those Fedora machines at all.

Firewalld, nftables, and libvirt on Gentoo

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 11:35:30 +1100

After many and many weeks, I finally got libvirt working on this Gentoo machine. Before revealing how I’ve fixed this problem, let’s go through what the issues were.

On this Gentoo I run Firewalld with nftables as backend. An alternative to nftables is iptables, but since nftables is newer and is becoming the default backend for more and more distribution including Fedora, I think it’s a good thing to adobt it early.

Pairing Bluetooth Mouse on Gentoo

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 13:27:58 +1000

Just a few a days ago, I wrote a blog post about Pairing Bluetooth Mouse on Command Line on a Fedora laptop. So why do I need to write another post about doing the same thing on Gentoo? Well, as it turned out, I need a bit more than just turning on the bluetooth service and pairing the mouse. My Gentoo’s installation is very minimal, and I think this gives me an excuse to document on how I’d solve or get this working on Gentoo.

Pfl Provides whatprovides on Gentoo

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 19:05:37 +1000

On Fedora or CentOS, on way to find out what package providing a file we can use yum whatprovides [FILENAME] or dnf whatprovides [FILENAME] on a DNF-aware system.

# dnf whatprovides tmux
Last metadata expiration check: 2:33:06 ago on Wed 09 Sep 2020 09:45:07 PM AEST.
tmux-3.0a-2.fc32.x86_64 : A terminal multiplexer
Repo        : @System
Matched from:
Provide    : tmux = 3.0a-2.fc32

tmux-3.0a-2.fc32.x86_64 : A terminal multiplexer
Repo        : fedora
Matched from:
Provide    : tmux = 3.0a-2.fc32

I really need this similar tool on Gentoo, and it looks like the emerge command doesn’t have this function built it. Fortunately, there is a utility called e-file (provided by pfl package) which kinda provides this whatprovides option as in yum and dnf.

Installing USBGuard on Gentoo

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:56:47 +1000

Let’s find out the name of the package using the awesome eix command, and install that package.

 ~ # eix usbguard
* sys-apps/usbguard
     Available versions:  ~0.7.6-r1 ~0.7.8 {bash-completion dbus ldap policykit static-libs systemd}
     Homepage:            https://github.com/USBGuard/usbguard
     Description:         Daemon protecting your computer against BadUSB

 ~ # emerge --ask sys-apps/usbguard

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "sys-apps/usbguard" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- sys-apps/usbguard-0.7.8::gentoo (masked by: ~amd64 keyword)
- sys-apps/usbguard-0.7.6-r1::gentoo (masked by: ~amd64 keyword)

For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

It looks like we need to unmask usbguard.

Install Ansible on Gentoo

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 02:19:29 +1000

Gentoo provides a package called app-admin/ansible for Ansible. To install it, just run:

❯ sudo emerge --ask app-admin/ansible

Note that unlike Ansible package on CentOS/Fedora, there is no default ansible.cfg provided with the Gentoo Ansible package.

❯ ansible --version
ansible 2.9.9
  config file = None
  configured module search path = ['/home/kenno/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/lib/python-exec/python3.7/ansible
  python version = 3.7.7 (default, May  9 2020, 19:52:18) [GCC 9.2.0]

Reference:

Gentoo Luks Fails Kernel 5.6

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 01:05:06 +1000

My Gentoo based Linux laptop which is still running the older kernel 5.3.15. A short while back, I had a failed attempt to upgrade the kernel to 5.4.2 as the disk which encrypted with dm-crypt couldn’t be decrypted on boot. Since the older kernel 5.3.15 was working fine and free time was I what I lacked of, it seemed logical to just not doing anything about it.

Today while updating all the packages on my Gentoo laptop, I notice there was a newer kernel available: 5.6.3. So let’s try to install this newest kernel again and see if the issue with Luks/dm-crypt still persists.

feh WARNING: abc.png - No Imlib2 loader for that file format

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 16:00:52 +1000

As the title says, I cannot use feh to open a PNG image. feh on this machine can’t open a JPG image either. Let’s see what’s wrong.

I should notice that this problem occured on a machine running Gentoo. :D

First, let’s check if feh is installed using my favorite tool called eix:

~ ❯❯❯ eix feh
[I] media-gfx/feh
     Available versions:  3.1.1 ~3.1.3 ~3.2 ~3.2.1^t {curl debug exif test xinerama}
     Installed versions:  3.1.1(11:11:04 PM 04/14/2019)(-curl -debug -exif -test -xinerama)
     Homepage:            https://feh.finalrewind.org/
     Description:         A fast, lightweight imageviewer using imlib2

According to the above information, feh:3.1.1 is already installed. It also mentions that feh use imlib2 library.

Upgrading Kernel Issues and Fixes on Gentoo

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 23:33:03 +1000

Today I decided to upgrade the kernel (gentoo-sources) from 4.19.64 to 5.2.6 on my old ThinkPad X220. Apart from a few hiccups, everything went quite smoothly. I already have a blog post about upgrading the kernel on Gentoo, so I’ll skip many things here.

First, ensure the sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-5.2.6 is installed:

# emerge -av =sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-5.26

After the above package installed, we should be able to list it:

~ ❯❯❯ eselect kernel list
Available kernel symlink targets:
  [1]   linux-4.14.63-gentoo-r1
  [2]   linux-4.14.65-gentoo
  [3]   linux-4.14.78-gentoo
  [4]   linux-4.14.83-gentoo
  [5]   linux-4.19.27-gentoo-r1
  [6]   linux-4.19.44-gentoo
  [7]   linux-4.19.52-gentoo
  [8]   linux-4.19.57-gentoo
  [9]   linux-4.19.64-gentoo *
  [10]  linux-5.2.6-gentoo

Let’s select linux-5.2.6-gentoo as the version we’d like to switch to:

Install Lmod on Gentoo

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 20:42:41 +1100

Lmod is not available in Gentoo’s portage. This blog post will document how I got Lmod installed on my Gentoo machine.

First requirement is to install lua. I picked lua 5.2 as I had problem when experimenting with Lua 5.1. To install lua-5.2.3 from portage, run:

# emerge -av =dev-lang/lua-5.2.3

If you have multiple versions of Lua installed, make sure to select this lua 5.2.3 as the default version using eselect:

NVME Not Found on Boot With UEFI

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 20:32:55 +1100

A quick note to remind myself how to get NVME recognized on Dell XPS 15 9570 on Gentoo.

Make sure to add the kernel BLK_DEV_NVME options.

NVM Express block device (BLK_DEV_NVME)
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_NVME:
The NVM Express driver is for solid state drives directly
connected to the PCI or PCI Express bus. If you know you
don't have one of these, it is safe to answer N.
To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the
module will be called nvme.
Symbol: BLK_DEV_NVME [=m]
Type : tristate
Prompt: NVM Express block device
Location:
-> Device Drivers
Defined at drivers/nvme/host/Kconfig:1
Depends on: PCI [=y] && BLOCK [=y]

Ref:

How to Connect to Hidden Wifi Using nmcli

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 18:00:14 +1100

Today I need to setup a wifi connection on a laptop to my home network with hidden SSID. Like so many things that I only have to do it once in a while, I couldn’t remember how to do it. So this blog post is something to remind me in the future should I need to do it agian.

Here is one way to do it, thanks to this Stack Overflow question. (Alternatively, check man nmcli and man nmcli-examples which have detailed information):

Fix Dbus Daemon Autolaunch Was Disabled at Compile Time

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 15:03:36 +1100

When I tried to run notify-send on my laptop running Gentoo, it didn’t work and was given the following message:

$ notify-send 'hello'
Connecting to D-Bus failed: Using X11 for dbus-daemons autolaunch was disabled at compile time, set your DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS instead

How do one set DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS? Accoridng to this, it can be done by running:

$ export $(dbus-launch)

However, I want to also have D-Bus compiled with X11 support.

First let’s verify if D-Bus service is running:

Upgrade Kernel on Gentoo

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 20:17:30 +1100

Today I’m going to document how I built and installed kernel 4.20.1 a Gentoo laptop, Dell XPS 15 9570.

This blog post is not intended to be a tutorial or even a guide. I’m very new to Gentoo, and have been spoiled by Ubuntu and Fedora for not needing to compile my own kernel. :)

Anyhow, it’s very likely that I’ll need to compile the kernel again on Gentoo, and therefore I think having some sorts of documents is better than nothing at all.

Gentoo Eix Tool

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 19:52:29 +1100

A utility that I use quite a lot on a Gentoo system is called eix. This tool allows me to search for packages by name and list all available flags.

The document on the Gentoo Wiki is great and has detailed explanation about it.

In this blog post, I’m just going to write down what I did to get it installed.

I want to set its flag to use qlite.

# echo 'app-portage/eix sqlite' > /etc/portage/package.use/eix

Then proced with the installation:

Connect to a WPA2-Enterprise Connection Using nmcli

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 14:11:38 +0000

This is like a re-post of a question from askubuntu.com. To get to that post, I usually had to google it. So, I’ll post it here so I know where to look for when I need it again.

At work, we use WPA2-Enterprise for wireless connection. To create a new connection on my laptop with wlp3s0 as Wifi device, follow this step:

# nmcli con add type wifi ifname wlp3s0 con-name work-wifi ssid work-ssid

# nmcli con edit id work-wifi
nmcli> set ipv4.method auto
nmcli> set 802-1x.eap peap
nmcli> set 802-1x.phase2-auth mschapv2
nmcli> set 802-1x.identity myusername
nmcli> set 802-1x.password mypassword
nmcli> set wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-eap
nmcli> save
nmcli> activate

That’s it if you know how to do it.

Stopping hard drive clicking noise on MSI U100

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:14:27 +0000

Finally, the OS X has been removed from MSI Wind U100, and completely replaced by Debian (testing).

Whenever the computer is idle, the hdd makes this weird clicking noise. To stop it, we can use hdparm to turn it off.

kenno@tora:~$ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda</p>

/dev/sda:
 setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
 APM_level      = 254

Source: MSI Wind – Gentoo Linux Wiki