Easier Gentoo system maintenance

This is a set of commands to simplify maintaining a Gentoo system.

esync

This command needs eix installed to fully function. It runs eix-sync. This is intended for use as a cron job. I use it daily.

This command can run layman -S for you if you pass -l or --run-layman.

emerges

This command will do the following:

Update Portage
Update @world with options --with-bdeps=y, --update, --deep, --newuse
Update live installations of packages (@live-rebuild)
Run emerge @preserved-rebuild
Run systemctl daemon-reexec (if applicable)
Update the kernel

There are flags to disable most parts of this functionality, such as --no-upgrade-kernel. Pass --help to see all the options.

Automatic kernel update process

Older versions of this tool supported various ways to update the kernel to boot from. However this is better left to the configuration and hooks of kernelinstall which is invoked by make install.

The automatic kernel update will only work if there are 2 kernels displayed with the command eselect --brief kernel list. The first one in the list must be the active kernel. The second one is the one to upgrade to. After switching to the new kernel, a .config must exist in /usr/src/linux or the command will not run make. If the configuration exists at /proc/config.gz it will be used.

If emerges fails to build the kernel because of the state of eselect kernel list, you can fix it and re-run the update by running upgrade-kernel.

The old kernel data in /boot will be stored in /root/.upkeep/old-kernels.

If you want to only rebuild the kernel, run rebuild-kernel.

ecleans

This command will run the following commands (or equivalents):

emerge --depclean
emerge @preserved-rebuild
revdep-rebuild
eclean-dist --deep
rm -fR /var/tmp/portage/*