Figured I’d try enabling and disabling some of the USE flags for Pidgin, but without any luck, it still crashed. Then I went for compiling it with the debug USE flag enabled, as was suggested when running from the terminal. (yeah, yeah, should’ve gone for that sooner )

This time I found out the crash occurred immediately when the perl module was probed:

(22:11:20) plugins: probing /usr/lib/purple-2/perl.so
Hi, user. We need to talk.
I think something’s gone wrong here. It’s probably my fault.
No, really, it’s not you… it’s me… no no no, I think we get along well it’s just that…. well, I want to see other people. I… what?!? NO! I haven’t been cheating on you!! How many times do you want me to tell you?! And for the last time, it’s just a rash!
Aborted

Somehow it crashed right there, but I have as of yet not figured out why. My (temporary) solution is to merge Pidgin with the perl USE flag disabled, as it is enabled by default.

Enter nano
nano -w /etc/portage/package.use
and append or insert the following line:
net-im/pidgin gtk -perl
(if you use Gnome by default you’ll probably not need to add the gtk USE flag)

When remerging Pidgin after this, I can open the plugins dialog without any problems. Thing is: I can’t reproduce this problem on my trusty little netbook, which is rather odd. Probably has something to do with my perl install or config… but I don’t feel like diving in there (yet). It works, I’m happy, but if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop me a line.

On a related note, I prefer the smileys used on Gathering of Tweakers and found out they are included in the smileypack available through Portage.

If you’re using stable, you’ll find that it is masked, so add
x11-themes/pidgin-smileys ~x86
(change for whatever arch you’re using) to package.keywords:
nano -w /etc/portage/package.keywords
and you are free to emerge the pack:
emerge pidgin-smileys
You don’t have to restart Pidgin to enable them, just head on over to preferences and enjoy!

Update 25th of June 2009: You can also extract the larger DiGiTheme zipfile in ~/.purple/smileys for even more GoT (and some MSN) smileys

* Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
* installed at the same time on the same system.

(‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘perl-core/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.015′, ‘nomerge’) pulled in by
perl-core/IO-Compress-Zlib required by world

(‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘perl-core/IO-Compress-2.020′, ‘merge’) pulled in by
~perl-core/IO-Compress-2.020 required by (‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘perl-core/IO-Zlib-1.09′, ‘nomerge’)
~perl-core/IO-Compress-2.020 required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/perl-Compress-Zlib-2.020′, ‘merge’)
~perl-core/IO-Compress-2.020 required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/perl-IO-Compress-Base-2.020′, ‘merge’)
(and 5 more)

(‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘perl-core/Compress-Zlib-2.015′, ‘nomerge’) pulled in by
perl-core/Compress-Zlib required by world

Fortunately, after seeing this and having seen poppler doing the exact same, I knew the solution. Clearly perl-core/Compress-Zlib and perl-core/IO-Compress-Zlib were somehow present in world, while they should be mere dependencies.

The fix was just like last week’s fix:
emerge -C perl-core/Compress-Zlib perl-core/IO-Compress-Zlib

Easy does it! For more details, see the previous post.

During my initial emerge -uDN world I was confronted with the following list of blocks:

Conflict: 7 blocks (6 unsatisfied)

* Error: The above package list contains packages which cannot be
* installed at the same time on the same system.

(‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘dev-libs/poppler-glib-0.10.7′, ‘merge’) pulled in by
~dev-libs/poppler-glib-0.10.7[cairo] required by (‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘media-gfx/gimp-2.6.4′, ‘nomerge’)
~dev-libs/poppler-glib-0.10.7[cairo] required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/poppler-glib-0.10.7′, ‘merge’)

(‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘dev-libs/poppler-qt3-0.10.7′, ‘merge’) pulled in by
~dev-libs/poppler-qt3-0.10.7 required by (‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘kde-base/kpdf-3.5.10-r1′, ‘nomerge’)
~dev-libs/poppler-qt3-0.10.7 required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/poppler-qt3-0.10.7′, ‘merge’)

(‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘app-text/poppler-bindings-0.10.5-r1′, ‘nomerge’) pulled in by
app-text/poppler-bindings required by world

(‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘app-text/poppler-utils-0.10.7′, ‘merge’) pulled in by
~app-text/poppler-utils-0.10.7[abiword] required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/poppler-utils-0.10.7′, ‘merge’)
~app-text/poppler-utils-0.10.7[abiword] required by (‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘net-print/cups-1.3.10-r1′, ‘nomerge’)

(‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘dev-libs/poppler-0.10.7′, ‘merge’) pulled in by
~dev-libs/poppler-0.10.7 required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘dev-libs/poppler-glib-0.10.7′, ‘merge’)
~dev-libs/poppler-0.10.7 required by (‘ebuild’, ‘/’, ‘virtual/poppler-0.10.7′, ‘merge’)
~dev-libs/poppler-0.10.7 required by (‘installed’, ‘/’, ‘app-office/openoffice-3.0.0′, ‘nomerge’)
(and 2 more)

For more information about Blocked Packages, please refer to [snip]

Now if I read through this list carefully I might have spotted the culprit before resorting to a websearch, but unfortunately I didn’t. Both poppler*-0.10.7 and poppler*-0.10.5-r1 were required and I didn’t realize why.

Turns out the solution was my sloppy Gentoo-past haunting me: poppler does not belong in world. In the past I may have emerged software that did not belong in world without -1, as I just didn’t see the issue with that. Well, here it was.

To remove poppler (and others) from world, use:
emerge -C app-text/poppler app-text/poppler-bindings
Followed by
emerge -uDN world
(assuming you have set –ask (and –verbose) as EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS)

For anyone who, after reading this, is still somewhat puzzled as to the how and why of world, try the Gentoo documentation on Portage or browse through man emerge.

In my own (probably not quite correct) words: whenever you install a major piece of software, use emerge without -1, to ensure it is recorded in the so called world file. Whenever you update your world file using emerge -u world, the packages in the world file will be updated. In case a package is a dependency, Portage will automatically upgrade it once something in the world file requests it. As poppler was recorded in the world file, while it should have been a dependency, a conflict arose when other package in world were requesting an update. So whenever you have the need to manually install a dependency, use emerge -1 [packagename].

TL;DR: no dependencies in world please.

But it failed.

nmap: unrecognized option '--script'
[snip: followed by regular nmap --help output]

Eh?

As my thinking was suspended, I went for Google to find me the culprit responsible for this error. No results. What? Ah, well, this is just why I wanted my own blog: to enhance Google with yet unknown knowledge (or knowledge previously only available in obscure languages). Now only to find the solution…

Turns out it was actually rather simple: compile Nmap with the lua USE flag. Yes, that’s all.

OPEN PACKAGE.USE
nano /etc/portage/package.use
AND INSERT
net-analyzer/nmap lua
OR ON A TERMINAL ENTER
echo "net-analyzer/nmap lua" >> /etc/portage/package.use

After this you’re good to go.

While I’m at it, let’s leave you with the recommended scan options at the moment of writing:

#Source: Nmap changelog
o Recommended command for a fast Conficker scan (combine into 1 line):
nmap -p139,445 --script p2p-conficker,smb-os-discovery,smb-check-vulns
--script-args checkconficker=1,safe=1 -T4 [target networks]
o Recommended command for a more comprehensive (but slower) scan:
nmap --script p2p-conficker,smb-os-discovery,smb-check-vulns -p-
--script-args checkall=1,safe=1 -T4 [target networks]