Versions how-to

by **maniac** on Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:46 pm

I tried to
emerge traceroute
and the system went to several sites (based on host names - across the world) and this basically failed because none of these sites apparently have a copy of
traceroute-1.4-genpatches.tar.gz
Looking at the gentoo site, there are a couple newer versions (which I tried a couple different ways to build - but was unsuccessful).

Can someone please provide a brief "how to" to

recognize the source of a problem such as this one
recognize when one can fetch & build a more recent version [or perhaps more importantly - when to stop trying]
then explain how to fetch & build a more recent version

Yes - I could instead ask the Zonbu support staff to fix this specific problem, but I was looking for a more general solution that might be more suitable for us "developer" types.

Thanks.

by **aymeric.augustin** on Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:10 pm

Assuming that this page of documentation: http://www.zonbu.com/doc/doku.php?id=extra_applications is up to date, traceroute is installed, and can be run with sudo even without root privileges.

Now, about your problem. The portage snapshot that we use is old. It defines the versions that are "known" for all applications, and is used to resolve dependencies. When you try to install a package, the most recent "known" version can be so old that it's no longer on the gentoo mirrors.

Moving to a more recent portage snapshot is planned for Q1 or Q2 2008. It will allow us to use more recent versions of many apps, but it will also break an awful lot of things. The operation requires careful planning.

You can use overlays to overcome this limitation, but it's rather advanced...

Versions how-to

Versions how-to

Re: Versions how-to

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