1gentoo(1x)                                                          gentoo(1x)
2
3
4

NAME

6       gentoo - A highly configurable file manager for X
7

SYNOPSIS

9       gentoo  [--version]  [--locale-info] [--root-ok] [--no-rc] [--no-gtkrc]
10       [--no-dir-history] [--left=path] [--right=path] [--run=ARG]
11

DESCRIPTION

13       gentoo is a file manager for Linux and compatible  systems.  It  allows
14       you  to  interactively  navigate  your file system using the mouse, and
15       also to perform various fairly standard operations (such as copy, move,
16       rename, ...)  on the files and directories contained therein.
17
18       gentoo  always  shows you the contents of two directories at once. Each
19       of these is displayed in its own scrollable list, called a pane. At any
20       time,  exactly  one pane is the current pane, and has a highlighted bar
21       running across its top region. The current pane acts as the source  for
22       all  file  operations, while the other pane is the destination. You can
23       select rows in panes using  selection  methods  of  varying  complexity
24       (from  simply clicking a row, to selecting rows by name using a regular
25       expression). Once you have a selection, you can click a button to  per‐
26       form some command on the selected files.
27
28       All  file operations performed by gentoo are implemented natively. When
29       you use gentoo to copy a file, for example, gentoo does not simply exe‐
30       cute  the system's cp(1L) command. Rather, gentoo contains its own code
31       for opening source and destination files, and then reading and  writing
32       the  right  amount of data between them. This way of doing things makes
33       gentoo independent of the availability of shell commands to do things.
34
35       gentoo incorporates a fairly powerful, object-oriented file typing  and
36       styling  system.  It can use a variety of ways to determine the type of
37       the files it is displaying. Each  type  is  then  linked  to  something
38       called  a  style,  which controls how rows of that type are rendered in
39       panes. You can use this system to control icons,  colors,  and  various
40       operations  on the rows. For example, it is easy to make gentoo display
41       all PNG images in red, and to invoke The GIMP(1) on them  when  double-
42       clicked.
43
44       A design goal with gentoo has been to provide full GUI configurability,
45       removing the need to edit a configuration file by hand and restart  the
46       program to see the changes, as is otherwise common in many programs for
47       Un*x. As a result of this, gentoo features a Configuration dialog  win‐
48       dow  where  you  can  configure most aspects of its operation directly,
49       using the mouse and standard GUI widgets.
50
51       gentoo borrows its basic look'n'feel from the classic Amiga  file  man‐
52       ager Directory OPUS, but is not a "clone" of any kind.
53

OPTIONS

55       gentoo  is not primarily driven by command line arguments, but the fol‐
56       lowing are available:
57
58       --version
59              Causes gentoo to print its version number (a string of the  form
60              MAJOR.MINOR.MICRO, like 0.20.7) to the standard output, and then
61              exit successfully. Numbers having an odd MINOR  component  indi‐
62              cate  development  versions of the program. So far, all versions
63              of gentoo have been classified as being development versions.
64
65       --locale-info
66              Makes gentoo print a couple of localization settings,  and  then
67              exit.   This  is mostly useful during development and debugging,
68              and not of a lot of interest when just using the application.
69
70       --root-ok
71              Makes gentoo accept being run by the root user.  Normally,  this
72              is  not  allowed  since  it is considered a big threat to system
73              security. Note that gentoo has  the  ability  to  execute  user-
74              defined  strings using the execvp(3) function. This is generally
75              considered harmful. However, if you really want  to  run  gentoo
76              while logged on as root, supplying this option allows you to. It
77              is not recommended, though.
78
79       --no-rc
80              Starts up gentoo without loading any  configuration  file.  This
81              makes it run using the built-in defaults, which are very Spartan
82              indeed. Seldom comfortable, but occasionally handy  when  trying
83              to  determine if a problem is with the configuration or with the
84              core code.
85
86       --no-gtkrc
87              Avoids loading the GTK+ RC file, thus disabling any widget  cus‐
88              tomizations,  and  forces  all  widgets  to use the default GTK+
89              look.
90
91       --no-dir-history
92              Avoids loading the file  that  holds  the  history,  i.e.  which
93              directories  have been previously visited by the two panes. Very
94              rarely needed, included mostly for completeness' sake.
95
96       --left, --right (or -1, -2)
97              Sets the initial path for the left and right pane, respectively.
98              If  present,  the path specified with one of these options over‐
99              rides any other path for the pane in question. See  below  (Ini‐
100              tial Directory Paths) for details.
101
102       --run ARG (or -rARG)
103              Runs ARG, a gentoo command. Commands specified this way are exe‐
104              cuted before gentoo accepts any user input through the graphical
105              interface,  but  after  the configuration file has been read in.
106              You can use it many times in order to make gentoo  run  a  whole
107              series  of  commands.  Remember  that gentoo's command names are
108              case-sensitive, and that built-in commands (like "About") always
109              begin with a capital letter.
110
111
112       Any  non-option command arguments will be silently ignored. If an argu‐
113       ment "-h" or "--help" is given, gentoo will give a summary of its  sup‐
114       ported command line options and exit successfully. If an unknown option
115       is given, or a option is missing a required argument, gentoo will whine
116       and exit with a failure.
117

BASIC USAGE

119       When gentoo starts up, it will open up its single main window, which is
120       split vertically (or horizontally; it's configurable) down the  middle,
121       forming  the two panes mentioned above. It also contains a bank of but‐
122       tons along the bottom.
123
124   Initial Directory Paths
125       The actual paths shown in the two panes upon start-up can be controlled
126       in  various  ways.  There are four ways of getting a path to show up in
127       pane. In order of decreasing priority, they are:
128
129       1. Command-line Argument
130              Using the --left and --right (or their short forms, -1  and  -2)
131              command-line arguments overrides any other setting.
132
133       2. Configured Default Directory
134              If  no command-line argument is present, and the "Default Direc‐
135              tory" configuration option is set, that directory is used.
136
137       3. Most Recently Visited Directory
138              If no default directory exists, the most recently visited direc‐
139              tory  is  taken  from  the directory history for each pane. This
140              only works if a  directory  history  file  has  been  found  and
141              loaded.
142
143       4. Current Directory
144              If all else fails, gentoo uses the current directory (".").
145
146   Navigating
147       Navigating  around the file system using gentoo is very simple. The two
148       panes act as independent views of the file system, and both  are  navi‐
149       gated in exactly the same way.
150
151       You  can  always  see  which directory a pane is showing by reading its
152       path, shown in the entry box below  (by  default--you  can  change  the
153       position to above) the pane.
154
155       To  enter  a  directory, locate it in the pane and double click it with
156       the left mouse button. gentoo will read the directory's  contents,  and
157       update the display accordingly.
158
159       There are several ways of going up in the directory structure. To enter
160       the directory containing the one currently  shown  (the  current  dir's
161       parent),  you  can:  click  the  parent button (to the left of the path
162       entry box); hit Backspace on your keyboard; click the middle mouse but‐
163       ton; select "Parent" from the pop-up menu on the right mouse button, or
164       click the downward arrow to the right of the path box (this pops up the
165       directory history menu), then select the second row from the top.
166
167   Selecting Files
168       Before  you can do anything to a file, you need to select it. All file-
169       management commands in gentoo act upon the current  selection  (in  the
170       current  pane). There are several ways of selecting files, but the most
171       frequently used are mouse-based. Note that the word "file"  used  below
172       really  should  be  taken  to mean "file or directory", since selection
173       doesn't distinguish between the two.
174
175       To select a file (or directory), just point the mouse at the name (any‐
176       where  in the row is fine), and click the left mouse button. The colors
177       of the clicked  row  will  change,  indicating  that  it  is  currently
178       selected. To select more rows, keep the mouse button down, and drag the
179       mouse vertically. gentoo extends  the  selection,  including  all  rows
180       touched.   If  you  drag across the top or bottom border, the pane will
181       scroll, trying to keep up.  This is a very quick and convenient way  of
182       selecting multiple files, as long as they are listed in succession.
183
184       If  you  click again on an already selected file, you will unselect it.
185       You can drag to unselect several files, just as when selecting.
186
187       To select a sequence of files without dragging, first click normally on
188       the  first file that you wish to select. Then release the mouse button,
189       locate the last file in the sequence (it can be either above  or  below
190       the  first one), hold down shift on your keyboard, and click the wanted
191       file. gentoo now adds all files between the first and the last  to  the
192       current selection.
193
194       If  you  follow  the instructions given above to select a sequence, but
195       press control rather than shift before clicking the second time, gentoo
196       will unselect the range of files indicated.
197
198       If  you  click on a file with the meta key held down (that's actually a
199       key labeled Alt, located to the immediate left of the space bar, on  my
200       PC  keyboard),  gentoo will do something cool: it will select (or unse‐
201       lect, it's a toggle just like ordinary selection) all files,  including
202       the  clicked  one, that have the same type as the one you clicked. This
203       can be used to select for example all PNG image files  in  a  directory
204       even if you can only see one. Occasionally very useful.
205
206       If  you click on a file with both the shift and control keys held down,
207       gentoo will toggle the selected state of all files having the same file
208       name  extension as the one you clicked. This can sometimes be useful to
209       select files that you don't have a proper type defined for, as long  as
210       those files do share an extension, that is.
211
212   Changing Sort Order
213       The  files  and  directories  listed  in each of gentoo's two panes are
214       always sorted on some column: typically file name.  You  can  chose  to
215       sort on some other field by clicking the appropriate column title once.
216       If you click on the field that is already current, the sorting will  be
217       reversed (i.e., for names it will be Z-A rather than A-Z).
218
219       If your display includes icons, try sorting on that column: gentoo will
220       then order each row according to its  File  Style,  grouping  the  rows
221       based  on  their parent styles, all the way up to the root of the Style
222       tree. This means that, for example, JPEG and PNG pictures (both  having
223       an  immediate parent style of Image) will be shown together, and before
224       all Text files (HTML, man pages and so on). It's quite cool, really. :)
225
226   Executing Commands
227       Commands are used to make gentoo do stuff. The typical command operates
228       upon  the  set of selected files in the current pane, so it's usually a
229       good idea to first select some files. See the previous  subsection  for
230       details  on  how  to  select  files.  Once  you  have  a bunch of files
231       selected, you need to tell gentoo which command to execute.  There  are
232       several ways of doing this.
233
234       Most  basic  file  operations  (e.g. copy, move, rename, and so on) are
235       found on the (cleverly labeled) buttons along the  bottom  of  gentoo's
236       main  window.  To  copy  a  file, just select it, then click the button
237       labeled "Copy". It's really that simple. Most  of  these  built-in  (or
238       native)  commands  automatically operate recursively on directories, so
239       you could copy (or move) a whole directory of files by  just  selecting
240       it and then clicking "Copy".
241
242       If  you  can't  see  a  button that does what you want to do, there's a
243       chance that the command exists, but isn't bound. Click the right  mouse
244       button  in  a  pane,  this  opens up the "pane pop-up menu". Select the
245       "Run..." item. This opens up a dialog window showing all available com‐
246       mands. Select a command, and click "OK" to execute it.
247

CONFIGURATION

249       gentoo is a pretty complicated program; it has a rather large amount of
250       configuration data that it needs in order  to  be  really  useful.  For
251       example,  my  current  personal configuration file contains well over a
252       thousand different configuration values.
253
254       To store this hefty amount of configuration data, gentoo uses a heavily
255       structured  configuration  file.  In  fact, the file is (or at least it
256       should be) legal XML!
257
258       When new features are added to gentoo, they will typically require some
259       form of configuration data. This data is then simply added somewhere in
260       the existing configuration file structure. Effort  is  made  to  assign
261       reasonable  built-in default values for all such new features, so older
262       configuration files (that don't contain the values required by the  new
263       features)  should still work. The first time you hit "Save" in the con‐
264       figuration window after changing your version of gentoo, your  personal
265       configuration file will be updated to match the version of gentoo.
266
267       Describing  how to go about configuring gentoo is too big a topic for a
268       manual page to cover. I'll just say that the command  to  open  up  the
269       configuration  window is called "Configure". It is by default available
270       on a button (typically the top-right one), in the pane pop-up menu, and
271       also by pressing the C key on your keyboard.
272

FILES

274       ~/.config/gentoo/gentoorc
275              A  user's personal configuration file. When gentoo starts up, it
276              will try to load this file. If the file  isn't  found,  the  old
277              name  ~/.gentoorc  is tested, and if that also fails a site-wide
278              configuration (see below) will be tried instead.
279
280       /usr/local/etc/gentoorc
281              This is the site-wide configuration file. If a user doesn't have
282              a  configuration  in  his/her  home directory, gentoo loads this
283              file instead. The actual location of this file is slightly  sys‐
284              tem-dependent,  the  above  is  the default. As an end user, you
285              typically won't need to access this file manually.
286
287       ~/.config/gentoo/dirhistory
288              This file contains lists of the most recently  visited  directo‐
289              ries,  for  both  panes.  These are the lists that appear in the
290              drop-down menu when the arrow next to  the  path  entry  box  is
291              clicked. Can be disabled in the Dir Pane configuration.
292
293       ~/.config/gentoo/gtkrc
294              This  file allows you to control the look of the widgets used by
295              gentoo, through the GTK+ style system. You can change the actual
296              path  in gentoo's Configuration window, the above is the typical
297              default for a modern Linux-based system. If a file  named  gtkrc
298              is  not  found in the configured path, the names gentoogtkrc and
299              .gentoogtkrc (note the period), in that order, are also tested.
300
301       /etc/passwd, /etc/group
302              These two files normally hold the system's  password  and  group
303              information.   These  are (probably) the ones gentoo uses to map
304              user IDs to login names, to do tilde-expansion (mapping of  user
305              name  to  directory  path), and to map group IDs to group names.
306              That is probably, because gentoo doesn't actually refer to these
307              files  by  name.  Instead,  it uses the (BSD-style) API function
308              calls getpwent(3) and getgrent(3) to access this information.
309
310       /etc/fstab, /proc/mounts, (or /etc/mtab)
311              These files contain data on available and mounted file  systems.
312              They  are read by gentoo's auto-mounting code. You can configure
313              the exact file names used, on the "Mounting"  tab  in  the  main
314              configuration  window.  Note that using /proc/mounts rather than
315              /etc/mtab is recommended on Linux systems; they contain  roughly
316              the  same  data,  but the one in /proc is always up to date, and
317              faster to read!
318
319

BUGS

321       All releases of gentoo numbered 0.x.y, where x  (the  so  called  minor
322       version  number)  is odd, are to be considered development releases, as
323       opposed to stable ones. This means that the software will probably suf‐
324       fer  from bugs. If you find something that you suspect is indeed a bug,
325       please don't hesitate to contact the author!  For details on how to  do
326       this, see below.
327
328       If you're concerned about using potentially buggy and completely unwar‐
329       ranted software to manage your precious files, please feel free not  to
330       use gentoo. The world is full of alternatives.
331
332       The  chances  that  a bug gets fixed increase greatly if you report it.
333       When reporting a bug, you must describe how to reproduce it,  and  also
334       try  to  be  as detailed and precise as possible in your description of
335       the actual bug. If possible, perhaps you should include the  output  of
336       gdb(1) (or whatever your system's debugger is called). In some cases it
337       might be helpful if you include the configuration file you  were  using
338       when  the  problem  occurred.  Before reporting a bug, please make sure
339       that you are running a reasonably recent version of the software, since
340       otherwise  "your"  bug  might  already been fixed. See below for how to
341       obtain new releases.
342
343       Also, you should locate and read through the BUGS file distributed with
344       gentoo,  so  you  don't  go  through  all this hassle just to report an
345       already known bug, thereby wasting everybody's time...
346

AUTHOR

348       gentoo was written, from scratch, by Emil Brink. The first line of code
349       was  written  on May 15th, 1998. It is my first program to use the GTK+
350       GUI toolkit, my first program to be released under the GPL, and also my
351       first really major Linux application.
352
353       The only efficient way to contact me (to report bugs, give praise, sug‐
354       gest features/fixes/extensions/whatever)  is  by  Internet  e-mail.  My
355       address  is <emil@obsession.se>.  Please try and include the word "gen‐
356       too" in the Subject part of your e-mail, to help me organize my  inbox.
357       Thanks.   If  you're  really  not in the mood for the direct feel of e-
358       mail, the second best choice for reporting bugs and making  suggestions
359       is the use the web-based bug tracker at <https://sourceforge.net/p/gen
360       too/bugs/>.  Thanks for contributing.
361

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

363       The author wishes to thank the following people for their various  con‐
364       tributions to gentoo:
365
366       Johan Hanson (<johan@tiq.com>)
367              Johan  is  the  man behind all icon graphics in gentoo, and also
368              the author of the custom widgets used in it. He  also  comes  up
369              with  plenty  of ideas for new features and changes to old ones,
370              some  of  which  are  even  implemented.  Johan  has  stuff   at
371              <http://www.bahnhof.se/~misagon/>.
372
373       Jonas Minnberg (<sasq@nightmode.org>)
374              Jonas  did  intensive  testing  of early versions of gentoo, and
375              eventually persuaded me into releasing it (back  around  version
376              0.9.7 or so).
377
378       Ulf Petterson (<ulf@obsession.se>)
379              Ulf  drew  the main gentoo logo (the one shown in the About win‐
380              dow), and also designed the main HTML documentation's layout.
381
382       Josip Rodin (<jrodin@jagor.srce.hr>)
383              Maintainer of the gentoo package for Debian Linux,  and  also  a
384              source  of  suggestions for improvements, as well as a relay for
385              bug reports from Debian Linux users.
386
387       Ryan Weaver (<ryanw@infohwy.com>)
388              Maintainer of the gentoo packages for Red Hat Linux, and  proba‐
389              bly one of the fastest package creators out there. :)
390
391       Oliver Braun, Jim Geovedi and Pehr Johansson
392              Maintainers  of  gentoo  ports  to FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD,
393              respectively.
394
395       Thanks also to all people who have mailed me  about  gentoo,  providing
396       bug  reports,  feature requests, and the occasional kind word. :^) It's
397       because of people like yourselves that we have this wonderful  computer
398       platform to play with.
399
401       gentoo  is  released  as free, open-source software, under the terms of
402       the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), version 2.  This  license  is
403       included in the distribution under the traditional name of COPYING, and
404       I suggest that you read it if you're not familiar with it. If you can't
405       find  the  file,  but  have  Internet  access, you could take a look at
406       <http://www.gnu.org/>.  It is important to realize that  the  mentioned
407       license means that there is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for this software.
408

OTHER INFO

410       Some  unfinished,  outdated, but still pretty informative documentation
411       is available, in HTML format, in the docs/ subdirectory in the  distri‐
412       bution  archive.  If  you  haven't  installed  gentoo from the original
413       .tar.gz distribution archive, you might need to either inspect the dis‐
414       tribution  you  did use (perhaps it came as some form of "package"), or
415       contact a system administrator.
416
417       The  GTK+  GUI  toolkit  that   gentoo   requires   is   available   at
418       <http://www.gtk.org/>.    gentoo  uses  the  slightly  outdated  stable
419       series, called 1.2.x. The latest known release in that series  is  GTK+
420       1.2.10.  Because  of  severe performance problems, gentoo will probably
421       not be ported to use the current (2.0.x) series of GTK+ any time soon.
422
423       The latest version of gentoo is always available on the official gentoo
424       home page, at <http://www.obsession.se/gentoo/>.
425

SEE ALSO

427       regex(7), file(1), magic(5), fstab(5), strftime(3)
428
429       Manual  page  section numbers in this page refer to sections on (some?)
430       Linux systems, your mileage will most likely vary. Try  the  apropos(1)
431       command, it might help you out.
432
433
434
435Obsession Development             June, 2016                        gentoo(1x)
Impressum