Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jeremy Blosser <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>]

A bit redundant but a bit more info on some things, if I may...

On Apr 07, Jeffrey 'jf' Lim [jfs.world AT gmail.com] wrote:
> first of all, the docs on the site seem to be, well... pretty
> outdated. Even the 'AMD 64 Status' doc is dated 2005-07-15! A lot of
> the other docs are as well, dated around that same date (which is so
> sad).

Most of them are dated from when they were migrated to a new server
instance.  No doubt the fact things are outdated is sad, but we don't have
enough people to keep up with everything on our todo list right now.  If
you want to chip in you're certainly welcome to do so.  In the meantime
this list or the irc channel can tell you what's current.

> So i'm hoping to get a little bit of an update from the list -
> is AMD64 now supported? http://www.sourcemage.org/Gentoo mentions
> "archspecs" (which i dunno what they are) for AMD64, but the
> http://www.sourcemage.org/node/1315 report makes me uncertain.

It's not officially supported.  A lot of people are using it anyway
including several core developers and find it works fine for them.

> In the meantime, I have also taken a look at the mirrors, and are
> confused as well.

Ignore the mirrors.  The only site to look at right now is
download.sourcemage.org, which redirects to one of two primary sites
(ibiblio and dbg).  Since the other mirrors are mostly behind and not
maintained we are in the process of implementing a better system for
mirroring; more should be coming out on that within the next little while.
We are making good progress on this; that dbg mirror wasn't in the rotation
until yesterday, and I haven't even officially announced it yet.

Of course anything you see on download.sourcemage.org that another mirror
does happen to have is fair game.

> Some mirrors have only the x86(i486).iso.bz2, while
> others (like the Lunar Linux mirror) have an 'x86_64' directory under
> the 'iso' directory as well, containing a few isos (which one should I
> use, if any??), and a chroot as well. Then
> http://www.sourcemage.org/node/1315 mentions a 0.9.4 test iso as well.

For 64 bit you just want silver thistle.  This isn't an officially
supported ISO (none of the 64 bit ones are), but it's the most current and
is what most people are using.  I don't think it has docs but if you have
issues with it ask in IRC.  "morfic" is the one who can give the most
definitive answers about it.

As noted, SMGL systems get installed much less often then they get updated,
so the install and install docs get the least love right now.  In the end
most of us see an install as just something that can happen any which way,
so a lot of chroot and other image installs go on.

> Lastly (and most importantly), could u guys tell me about the support
> for grsecurity as mentioned in the comparison against gentoo? How good
> (or complete) is the support for grsec? Do u have a hardened toolchain
> (with SSP and PIE) as well?

I don't think any of this has been touched in a while, so it's probably got
bit rot.  We don't tend to "support" features like this anyway as core, we
just stay out of your way so you can do what you want.  Where people have
interest they are welcome to create feature patches and the like and have
the spells offer to add those for other users, but I'm not sure anyone has
been focusing on that particular set for a while.

> ok. I hope i'm not making things too difficult for u guys here, but
> one last (hopefully) question... Which install guide should i refer to
> then for installing my system?

Typically you would use the "Install Source Mage" one linked off the main
wiki page (and mirrored on the www site), but it won't help with silver
thistle / 64 bit.  There is some extra crap on the wiki related to that
same server migration a couple of years ago; we're cleaning things up as we
find it and have time.

> > Well we lack on docs but irc://irc.freenode.net/#sourcemage is a helpfull
> > place so come and you should get answors to most of your questions :)
> >
> 
> i will! thanks. Dont really do irc, actually, but i guess i should pick it 
> up.

I didn't really do IRC before I joined sourcemage either.  If you like the
way the software works and can deal with us being fairly small, you'll want
to use irc to get the most out of the distro.  This is part of "dealing
with us being fairly small", since that's basically the path of least
resistence for us to actually do support and docs right now.

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