TIP Sync your private overlay

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This article is part of the Tips & Tricks series.
Terminals / Shells • Network • X Window System • Portage • System • Filesystems • Kernel • Other

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[edit] Motivation

Portage provides the possibility of maintaining private overlays which is a great way for incorporating self-written, modified or third-party ebuilds into the package management. However, if you have more than one Gentoo box, you will likely want to keep your private overlay in sync between them.


Note: This Tip uses a centralized approach where changes to the overlays are only made on one machine and then propagated to the rest. If you want decentralized synchronization you could build some scripts with unison (supports 2-way-merges) or rsync and put them here.


[edit] Rsyncd

Considering the existence of more than one Gentoo box at your site you should already have set up a local rsync mirror except you're running a fully fledged rsync mirror or have your /usr/portage exported by NFS (in the latter case you should really consider accessing your overlay(s) through NFS as well).

Add one or more modules adjusted for your overlay(s) to your /etc/rsyncd.conf on your mirror machine:

File: /etc/rsyncd.conf 
[private-overlay]
path = /usr/local/portage
comment = My very own private overlay
exclude = /cross-*


Shell: Restart the rsync daemon 
/etc/init.d/rsyncd restart


[edit] Layman

Layman is a very useful python script for retrieving and managing Gentoo overlays on your system.


Shell: Install layman 
emerge -av layman

Create a list of your custom portage overlays. If you will be syncing more than one other system, it might be more convenient to upload this to a web server.

File: /usr/portage/local/layman/my-list.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<layman>
  <overlay
      type = "rsync"
      src  = "rsync://server.com/private-overlay"
      contact = "you@email.com"
      name = "private-overlay">

    <link>
      http://optional-website.com/
    </link>
    <description>optional custom description</description>

  </overlay>
</layman>

Now edit your layman config file. Scroll down to the overlays section and add your new list file under the default.

File: /etc/layman/layman.cfg 
overlays  : http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/layman-global.txt
            file:///usr/portage/local/layman/my-list.xml

Download and setup the overlay using the value that you set for name= in my-list.xml. In this case it is private-overlay. Lastly, make a small addition to make.conf so portage can find the new overlay directory.

Shell: Sync up and Modify make.conf 
layman -a private-overlay
echo "source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf" >> /etc/make.conf

If you want to re-sync your custom overlay after you have made changes on your rsync server, run this command

Shell: Sync 
layman -S



[edit] Resources

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