What does "emerge sync" mean ??

CANE · Post by **CANE** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 12:58 pm

Through a lot of post l saw many persons using the following command
"emerge sync"
But l haven't understood as well the target of this command

Would you help please!!

Pobtastic · Post by **Pobtastic** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 1:54 pm

Now I am a n00b so don't take what I say as gospel or anything... But this is how I understand it:

If you 'emerge *something*' then you're installing it onto your system. There's a database of programs/ packages/ etc available here

When you 'emerge sync' you're putting a database of what's available (including version/ release numbers) from that site onto your xbox. Bear in mind that its only a snapshot of the current things *at the time* that you ran it. You will need to run 'emerge sync' every now and then to keep the database up to date. NB here that you really shouldn't run it any more than once a day as its a waste of their bandwidth and you WILL get banned for misuse as it plainly says.

To see what this means, take a look at something which is already installed on your system... In a konsole type: (obviously not the commentary which I've written in brackets!)

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su - root (and enter your password)
emerge sync (if you haven't done so already)
emerge -s nano (this stands for emerge search the database for the text editor program called nano)

The output from this will show you what version you have installed and the current version available. If the current version is newer than yours you can then type the following to update it:

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emerge nano

You *may* come across some things which you shouldn't update as they need patching to work on the xbox. I think these are mostly system type things like drivers, etc... Pretty much all programs I've tried so far work although I haven't exactly been majorly adventurous!

One handy thing I tend to install is acrobat reader - type 'emerge acroread'. You will however have to create a link to it from your windows manager. The executable is found at /opt/acrobat reader/acroread I think...

The next thing you're likely to post about is why some packages are masked. I think this is because they're unstable for 'our' system (x86) so you're unable to install them quite so easily... Stick with stuff that isn't masked for the time being until you're a MASTER LINUX USER!!!!

Pobster

Trogdor · Post by **Trogdor** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 8:35 pm

Very good explanation, Pobtastic. As an add-on, I feel that it is wasteful and unnessecary to run emerge sync more than one a week, unless there is a specific security update that you need.

CANE · Post by **CANE** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:54 pm

thank you very much....

nobspangle · Post by **nobspangle** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 3:40 pm

Trogdor wrote:Very good explanation, Pobtastic. As an add-on, I feel that it is wasteful and unnessecary to run emerge sync more than one a week, unless there is a specific security update that you need.

This is good advice
Their is no point running emerge sync unless you are updating all your packages (with emerge -uD world) or you want to install a package that has only just been released.