FAQ
From GoboLinux Knowledge Base
[edit] Design
[edit] Why are all of the main directory names in the Gobo filesystem capitalized?
Because they look better and give us a "free namespace" apart from whatever Unix directories may show up. Back in the day when we came up with "System", some people used to tell us "Why didn't you choose 'system'? Or even better, 'sys'?". Well, by now you can guess what would have happened if we listened to them. :) In practice, capitalization is not a hassle: in GUIs it makes no difference (one click is still one click), in the CLI, we use zsh configured with case-insensitive tab-completion. In other words, no, you don't have to use the Shift key an extra thousand times a day. :)
[edit] Ok, so i have Directory listings like /Files /Mount and so on. If i type 'files' i dont cd to the directory, but when i do Files I do change to the directory. Did i forget something?
Probably. Press the TAB key to let your zsh suggest where you want to go. If there are multiple suggestions, zsh lets you browse them via the TAB key again, then press enter if you found what you want. For compatibility issues, there are some hidden directories, just try 'cd /etc' for instance.
[edit] Why does /System/Links use relative symlinks?
For instance, zip points to ../../../Programs/Zip/2.32/bin/zip, with awkward-looking leading ".."'s.
Relative symlinks are usually preferred to absolute symlinks (which start from the root; e.g. zip -> /Programs/Zip/Current/bin/zip). With relative symlinks, if the Gobo drive is mounted into another filesystem, they will still work. They're also more robust for bind-mountings, chroots, and other filesystem tricks.
[edit] Installation/LiveCD
[edit] What's up with the profiles you can choose for installation...are they editable?
It was an often requested feature, so we implemented it. Profiles are merely text files listing package sets at (FIXME: where?), which can be fine-tuned through the installer's interface. If you come up with a nice profile, submit it to the mailing list and we'll consider adding it to the distribution.
[edit] Can you select more than one profile during install?
Not at this point. Selecting a profile resets the package list.
[edit] Can I use DHCP on the LiveCD?
That is a bug with the current LiveCD. A workaround is to run "dhcpcd -L /tmp/dhcpcd" in a shell. DHCP works fine on a harddrive install.
- If the dhcpcd solution does not work, persist. Make sure you do this as your first action before starting X up. For the longest while it didn't work properly for me, but it automagically began to work on its own. Go figure. -- Sy
- This should be noted in http://gobolinux.org/index.php?page=known_issues_011 -- In fact, it may be a good thing to point those known issues pages to a wiki page for user-editability.
Please be aware that DHCP should work with the most recent LiveCD's. This bug was fixed a long time ago.
[edit] Lilo over Grub:?
I finished installing gobo without having installed a bootloader. I later used "Damn Small Linux" to chroot into hda1 so I could setup Lilo but the only things in /System/Kernel/Devices are null and stdrin and stdrout.
[edit] Where do I tell lilo to look for /dev/hda and /dev/hda1?
About /S/K/D: GoboLinux is based on devfs. When running in a chroot environment, a good idea is to use "mount --bind" to make your /dev directory visible inside the chroot (see 'man mount' for details). About lilo configuration: it should proceed as usual, using /Programs/Lilo/Settings/lilo.conf, properly linked at /System/Settings/lilo.conf (which is, after all, the same old /etc/lilo.conf).
[edit] Does the LiveCD kernel contain drivers for IDE RAID devices? (such as PROMISE PDC202xx)
My only hard drive is connected to such a device and if there are no drivers for it, then it is not visible, preventing installation.
A Promise FastTrak TX2000 Controller worked for me. There were no HDDs other than the pair raided through it, and they were seen by Gobo, although I did not attempt an install. -- Sy
[edit] How do I customize my LiveCD?
See Building a custom GoboLinux LiveCD.
[edit] Scripts
[edit] How do i install a package with CompileProgram that installs additional kernel modules?
That's an open problem! I just added this to the To-do list.
[edit] How do I view which recipes are available on the commandline? (Similar to how apt-show works)
This should work:
UpdateRecipes ls /Files/Compile/Recipes/
[edit] zsh and other Console stuff with Gobolinux
[edit] If someone'd ask you, why to use zsh instead of bash, what would be the main advantage of zsh over bash?
Case-insensitive tabbed autocompletion. Menu-style completion. Pressing the Tab key again walks through the options, and you can also use the arrow keys to navigate through them. Several extended shell features, such as */ means all directories, foo*(@) means all symlinks starting with foo, which are really handy on the command line. The GoboLinux scripts, however, use plain bash scripting for more conservative compatibility. It's probably best to refer to the zsh home page for more info. There are, in fact, a great number of powerful and easily adopted features available within zsh which make it convincingly "more effective" for its users. YMMV of course, but at the very least there is good (if not great) compatability for bash from zsh so most users won't see a down side since there's "nothing to lose" when using zsh. -- Sy Actually the zsh wiki and their irc channel at freenode is MUCH better. I have recieved great help there. - Sh
[edit] What is the default font for the console and where can i find and change it?
The default font is lode-lat1u-16.psf.gz and was drawn by Hisham Muhammad specifically for GoboLinux. It is located at /Files/Fonts/Console. You can change your console font settings at /System/Settings/BootOptions.
[edit] USB
[edit] How can I get my USB Device (Example: USB Stick) to mount in GoboLinux?
Instead of something like
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
you would do
mount /System/Kernel/Devices/sda1 /Mount
(or make an alias to do this work for you. Normally one would not need to do this as automounting is possible)
[edit] Compile
[edit] I have already source for package recipe i'm installing, how do i save time by not downloading it again?
Copy/Move the source tarball to /Files/Compile/Archives.
[edit] What does /Files/Compile/Archives do?
/Files/Compile/Archives is where Compile stores and searches the tarballs of the programs it compiles. If you need/want to use the tarballs from another location, just set the appropriate value at /System/Settings/Compile/Compile.conf.
Specific Example: moving Source files to /Files/Compile/Archives. I backup my system including source code on a rewritable DVD. On that DVD i also include some of my html and php files. All those files are under a directory (let's call it foo), and this foo directory has many many subdirectories, like cpp, php, misc and so on. I want to keep the structure because I found it to be a nice way to backup my system.
[edit] Help! I have a problem with UnionFS!
This problem seems to be (more or less) already well known. Error messages may be such as this: "Unable to mount writable areas in chroot"
This seems to be a problem related to UnionFS. The latest SVN Snapshots of Compile probably fixed this, but until then you can try to use this workaround:
unset unionsandbox # This is probably not needed, but better safe than sorry NO_UNIONFS=no # this setting should disable the UnionSandbox
[edit] System Management
[edit] How do I add a new user on my Gobolinux System?
If the user name is "michael", just do this:
AddUser michael
[edit] Miscellanea FAQ Questions
[edit] How do I set my timezone? I don't live in BRT!
You have to do
ln -sf /Programs/~Glibc/~Current/~Shared/zoneinfo/where/you/live /Programs/~Glibc/~Settings/localtime
Also, you can change if hardware time is local/GMT by editing
vim /Programs/~BootScripts/~Settings/~BootScripts/~Options
[edit] I have a mouse with a scrollwheel. Where can i set that the scrollwheel lets you scroll up and down?
This was a bug in 011: the X settings detected for the LiveCD are not being copied to the installation. You can copy the X configuration file (/Programs/Xorg/Settings/X11/XF86Config or xorg.conf) from the LiveCD and overwrite the one in the hard disk. Wheel support is controlled by the ZAxisMapping variable. The mouse section will look a bit like this:
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection
In later Gobolinux version this should work already (if not, bugreport please)
[edit] Will devfs be replaced by udev, and if so, when?
Version 012 ships with udev by default.
[edit] Does Gobo use union directories to duplicate the benefits of /usr /usr/local, etc.?
Not yet, but this is planned. There are good reports in the mailing list of unionfs experiments, so it's likely that it will be included in the next release.
[edit] Grub has been erased by windows reinstallation, the Grub boot menu does not show anymore
You just need to restore Grub from the LiveCD.
- First, boot the LiveCD and open a console
- Then, launch grub and enter the following commands :
$ grub grub> root (hd0,1) grub> setup --prefix=/System/Kernel/Boot/grub (hd0) grub> quit
[edit] Recipes
[edit] How do I install a local Recipe? (Can you provide me with one example here please?)
See the "Compiling from source" chapter in GoboLinux Documentation Project :)
Here is the link: Compiling_from_source
[edit] Folklore
[edit] Who is Gobo, and why does he wear that coat?
Gobo himself does not wear that coat. Well, actually we don't know if he does or not, but that is beyond the scope of this site. Who wears that coat is Fibo, Gobo's butler, assistant and loyal server. Fibo's coat, however, has been stolen by a naughty penguin named Que. Some historians say the theft coincides in date with the birth of GoboLinux, but that is an unconfirmed fact. What we do know is that Fibo has since sewed a new coat for him, so now both Fibo and Que wear identical coats.
Another rumour has it also, that Fibo is in fact only an alter-ego of Gobo, and Gobo likes to run around in disguise - just like a modern Spiderman variant. :)
And yet another rumour states that this all is not real anyway, some kind of inside-jokes and people making up new stories ... maybe Gobo was seen in rare and unusual places? Send postcards! :P
- That reminds me, I think it would be cool to see multiple variants of Gobo at different world-locations. Artwork!
[edit] What's this nonsense is all about!?
There is an internal-joke nonsense-world underneath various elements of GoboLinux. In time you'll get it. :-)
[edit] Documentation
[edit] How can I use this wiki for offline mode?
(Please add Answer here. I think it would be awesome if Gobolinux wiki could be made available offline too)
The same way you can get any web site, I guess.
wget -rkNEK -nH -np -R 'index.php,Special:*' -X'/wiki/alter,/wiki/Special:*' gobo.kundor.org/wiki/
which means
wget --recursive --convert-links --timestamping --html-extension --backup-converted --no-host-directories \ --no-parent --reject='index.php,Special:*' --exclude-directories='/wiki/alter,/wiki/Special:*' 'http://gobo.kundor.org/wiki/'
This will save everything in a folder, "wiki". Later, you can run the same command (in the same directory) and wget should only get the changed files. CSS doesn't all come through (it should, but apparently wget doesn't understand "@import" statements.) so it's a little uglier.
P.S. the trailing slashes are important!
[edit] Help outside the scope of this Knowledge Base
[edit] Where else can I get help?
The best place currently is to send it to the mailing list. It is also likely that the answers may turn up here in this KB if its useful :-) Another place would be the seldom-used irc channel #gobolinux at freenode net. A helpful gobobot may lurk in that channel one day, after more knowledge is available in the KB. Last but not least you could always ask on the forum as well.
And even Googling might help you sometimes but you must remember that Gobolinux is rather small, so the available documents will probably be dwarved compared to Ubuntu or Gentoo. :-)
[edit] See also
- GoboLinux's Website Documentation - external link
- GoboLinux's Website FAQ - external link
- Myths and misconceptions about the design of GoboLinux - external link
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