Gentoo Tips & tricks

• Find the package origin of a file:

equery belongs file

• Manually configure a package: this is an old FAQ which has been dumbed down in newer versions of the FAQ document.

I want to perform the ./configure step myself. Can I?

Yes, but it is not trivial. First do man ebuild followed by ebuild foo-x.y.z.ebuild unpack. Then cd to 
/var/tmp/portage/foo-x.y.z/work. You can manually perform the ./configure and make steps yourself (you'll have 
to do both, since Portage does not separate the configure and build steps). To have Portage finish the 
installation (so that you can easily remove it later, should you desire to do so, and it will be registered in 
Portage as a possible dependency) you first need to touch /var/tmp/portage/foo-x.y.z/.compiled (tricking Portage
into thinking that ebuild foo-x.y.z.ebuild compile has completed), followed by ebuild foo-x.y.z.ebuild merge.

• log in without a password:

passwd -u username

"unlocks" the account. Now to log in that way with xdm: add this line to /etc/X11/xdm/XResources:

xlogin*allowNullPasswd: true

But there is a bug, so you have to log in twice.

• bcpp the C++ code beautifier