¡GARNOME!

GARNOME is a build utility that allows users to build the GNOME Desktop.

Based on the GAR ports system developed by Nick Moffitt. It downloads, builds and installs the GNOME Desktop from the latest tarball releases. It also includes extra GNOME software to provide users with a comfortable and complete desktop environment.

What do I need to install GARNOME?

Please refer to the DEPS-LIST file for a complete list of dependencies.

How do I configure GARNOME?

All the local settings are kept in gar.conf.mk. Here are the most useful ones:

GARCHIVEDIR: If you've downloaded the tarball collection already, point this to the directory where your tarballs are. Example:

GARCHIVEDIR = /home/gnome/download

main_prefix: Currently the default install location is $HOME/garnome. If you'd prefer to install GARNOME elsewhere, change this entry.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is NOT advised, or supported to install GARNOME as the 'root' user on your system.

If you would like to build GARNOME so that all of your users can use it, please set main_prefix to something sane like '/opt', '/opt/gnome-$VERSION' or '/usr/local/garnome' and then adapt the configuration accordingly. Use a dedicated 'build' user rather than the root account, who should own this directory. This is the only step that needs root privileges.

Support questions about installing GARNOME as the 'root' user will be discarded.

How do I use GARNOME?

Unpack the tarball, and optionally tweak the settings to your liking. The defaults should work without problems, then just:

cd garnome-x.xx.xx/desktop
make paranoid-install

That's all there is to it! GARNOME will begin to build and install the GNOME Desktop release, and everything it needs immediately.

If you want to build other meta directories or individual modules, just change to the appropriate directory and type 'make paranoid-install' or 'make install' respectively.

'paranoid-install' is only available for meta garballs and will stop building on the first error. Running 'make install' for a meta garball will continue building on errors, trying to build other packages.

There are a lot of packages included in GARNOME that are not built as part of the standard desktop. These packages can be built as either individual modules by entering their directories and typing 'make install' or as complete meta directories which can be built with 'make paranoid-install'.

admin/ Administrative Tools

bindings/ GNOME platform bindings collection

bootstrap/ Bootstrap related

fifth-toe/ A collection of high quality third-party programs designed

                 for your desktop, including Multimedia, Graphics and Internet
                 applications.

freedesktop/ Freedesktop.org projects

   geektoys/     Various extensions to GARNOME that can enhance the usability
                 of your desktop, including new desktop themes and applets
                 that fit into an existing installation.

hacker-tools/ Debuggers, Interface Designers and Hex Editors

mono/ Mono(tm)

   office/       Parts of the proposed 'GNOME Office' suite, including a
                 spreadsheet application, word processor and the Evolution
                 PIM / Groupware suite.

How do I start GARNOME once it is installed?

To use GARNOME you will first need to start the DBus, HAL, and Avahi daemons. You can use the script below to do this:

Note: To use Avahi you must make sure that you do not have any mDNS/Zeroconf daemons (i.e. Howl, mDNSResponder, etc.) running. For example to turn off mDNSResponder in Fedora 4, edit /etc/sysconfig/network and add:

NOZEROCONF=yes

Then either kill mDNSResponder or reboot your system.

#!/bin/bash

GARNOME=$HOME/garnome

## Use GARNOME's DBus, HAL, and Avahi

## Fedora users should uncomment this section #if [ `grep "<user>messagebus</user>" $GARNOME/etc/dbus-1/system.conf` ]; then

#       cat $GARNOME/etc/dbus-1/system.conf | \
#       sed 's,<user>messagebus</user>,<user>dbus</user>,' > \
#       $GARNOME/etc/dbus-1/system.conf;

#fi

su -c "pkill dbus; \

       pkill avahi-daemon; \
       pkill avahi-dnsconfd; \
       pkill hald; \
       rm -rf $GARNOME/var/run/messagebus.pid; \
       rm -rf $GARNOME/var/run/avahi-daemon/pid; \
       rm -rf $GARNOME/var/run/haldaemon.pid; \
       $GARNOME/bin/dbus-daemon --system; \
       $GARNOME/sbin/avahi-daemon -D; \
       $GARNOME/sbin/avahi-dnsconfd -D; \
       $GARNOME/sbin/hald"

Once the DBus, HAL, and Avahi daemons are running you must create a garnome-session script to start GARNOME. An example startup script would look like:

#!/bin/bash

GARNOME=$HOME/garnome

PATH=$GARNOME/bin:$PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$GARNOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH PYTHONPATH=$GARNOME/lib/python2.4/site-packages:$GARNOME/lib/python2.4/site-packages/gtk-2.0 PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$GARNOME/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig GDK_USE_XFT=1
XDG_DATA_DIRS=$GARNOME/share
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=$GARNOME/etc/xdg
MANPATH=$GARNOME/man:$MANPATH
DBUS_LAUNCH="$GARNOME/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session"

export PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH PYTHONPATH PKG_CONFIG_PATH \

GDK_USE_XFT XDG_DATA_DIRS XDG_CONFIG_DIRS MANPATH DBUS_LAUNCH

exec $DBUS_LAUNCH $GARNOME/bin/gnome-session

You can then use the standard method your distribution provides to launch it when you start X.

Note: If you have altered the install path in gar.conf.mk, remember to set the GARNOME variable at the top of your script to point to the correct directory.

If you start X with the startx command you should launch this in ~/.xinitrc. If you use the Xsession menu choice in GDM, you should launch this in ~/.xsession. Assuming the garnome-session script is in your path, both files should look like this:

#!/bin/bash
exec garnome-session

Adding GARNOME to GDM (Fedora)

If you would like to add GARNOME to your GDM you can do the following:

First chmod the garnome-session file.

chmod a+x garnome-session

Then just copy it to /usr/bin and setup the GDM Sessions file.

cp garnome-session /usr/bin
cd /usr/share/xsessions
sed -e 's/GNOME/GARNOME/g' -e 's/Exec=gnome-session/Exec=garnome-session/' < gnome.desktop > garnome.desktop

Note: This example shows how things are setup on Fedora but your GDM configuration might be different depending on your distribution. Consult your distribution's documentation for the specific changes that are required.

Important Notes

Building as root!

Building a desktop like GNOME as the root user isn't a good idea.

If your intention is to have all the users on a multiple user system be able to use the new desktop, create a dedicated 'build' user who owns the directory you specified for main_prefix in the gar.conf.mk file. (see the section entitled "How do I configure GARNOME?" for more information on how to do this)

Heed the warning above, it's simpler and quicker to type 'man useradd' than it is to re-install your box after a rogue program breaks it.

You should never build the entire GARNOME tree as 'root', unless you really do know what you are doing and there is absolutely no way to avoid it.

About bootstrap/

The number one question we get asked on the GARNOME list is about the contents of the bootstrap/ directory. For those who don't know, this directory contains programs that may or may not be present as part of an installed system, but have garballs included for compatibility reasons.

The bootstrap/ directory is for things that fit into three categories:

things that your distribution does not ship native packages of
things that your distribution does ship, but ships broken variations
things that are required to run the most recent versions of GNOME

Often we get asked: "Can you ship a kernel/gcc/glibc/X in bootstrap/?" The answer to this is ALWAYS GOING TO BE NO!

X, for example -- affects the whole of your system, not just GNOME -- shipping x.org because users would like to have transparent windows in their sessions is not an adequate reason to make the distribution ten times the size and further increase it's maintainence overhead. If you'd like transparent windowing, i'd suggest upgrading to a distribution that already contains x.org, then building GARNOME on that.

The following systems need things from bootstrap/

   System Type          Requires
   -----------          --------
   Debian <= sid        libiconv
   Mandrake <= 9.0      libiconv
   Mac OS X             dlcompat, libiconv

The bootstrap/ directory works slightly differently to other directories, to use it you need to enter each sub directory you need and type

make install

For example, to compile on Mac OS X -- you would type:

cd bootstrap/dlcompat/
make install

Then repeat the process for the other packages you need.

The general rule of thumb to use is:

Unless you know you need something in bootstrap/, you don't!

Linux, 2.6 kernels and GARNOME features

Since the release of GNOME 2.8.0, a number of features have been added to the core GNOME desktop that allows enhanced filesystem features, device-management and more.

The GNOME 2.14.0 release includes even more functionality which relies on a recent kernel and associated libraries being in place. In fact vast areas of the desktop are now controlled by special daemons that allows everything from fine grained access control to network discovery to multimedia functionality.

The downside to this, is some portions of GNOME now depend on a 2.6.x or newer kernel, as well as 'hal', 'dbus' and several other components.

If you are running an older distribution, this may mean that random portions of the GARNOME desktop/ directory may not build.

To fix this, you will need to upgrade to a 2.6.13 (or newer) kernel, and udev 071 (or newer).