iio-sensor-proxy requires that "s" word - should I keep trying or move on?

[Guest Gary Thompson]

Hi All,

I'm returning to Gentoo and chose funtoo instead.  I used Gentoo back in the 2000's but then there was an awkward transition when KDE3 was becomming stable and portage was a mess for me that I couldn't get through.  I jumped into Fedora for a while, then Ubuntu, then Fedora then Mint.  I missed Gentoo, so came to check you guys out.  I like a lot of Daniel's direction with Funtoo and am excited to be up and running on my brand new XPS 2in1 laptop.

But, I need the tablet mode of my laptop to work well as I bought it for that reason.  In my research,  it seems that iio-sensor-proxy is the program to use to handle all those fancy rotation sensors.  However, it has a nasty dependency:

systemd.

I missed OpenRC, although, I'm on the fence with systemd and I appreciate the arguments against it.  Is it worth me trying to get systemd up and running on a Funtoo system or should I just switch over to Gentoo?  

Recommendations?  Thanks heaps for your time.

[Oleg Vinichenko]

ebuild is already added into funtoo portage tree.

gnome-extra/iio-sensor-proxy-2.3

[Guest Gary Thompson]

I took a glance at the source code for iio-senor-proxy.  It's been a long time, but I can't see anything that really requires systemd except for udev file.

Still interested in people's thoughts at whether I should try systemd on my funtoo, but I could have a crack at making a patch to un-systemd this library.  

[Oleg Vinichenko]

you can try using systemd on a funtoo box, it's not forbidden, but officially systemd is not supported. for the ii-sensor-proxy, maybe there is an alternative software that does same.

[drobbins]

Gary, I would open a funtoo bug about this -- I can look in the source code and see if there is truly a dep on systemd.

[Oleg Vinichenko]

i took the opportunity and added ebuild for testing. actually it is not really hardcoded as i previously thought.

[monkeymonkey]

Thanks for the replies.  I downloaded the source code, modified the configure file to ignore systemd checks, compiled and it compiled successfully.  I think the only systemd dependencies are really UDEV / HAL or something like that (I'm no expert).

However running does nothing but exit with 0, but that's probably because I'm not running it properly.

I'll upload the ebuild in a new bug and see what I can do.

Thanks.

[monkeymonkey]

Thanks Oleg,

I found the bug you created  (https://bugs.funtoo.org/browse/FL-4265) and have added flora to my system for testing the ebuilds.

In summary of where I'm at:

• udev is now loading the iio-sensor-proxy data into the udev database (I can see IIO_SENSOR_PROXY_TYPE= entries when I export the database)
• I can run the iio-sensor-proxy service
• The client tool "monitor-sensor" is now seeing iio-sensor-proxy connect.
• I'm getting some errors with the iio-sensor-proxy service, it's having problems with sensor measurements which I will continue to investigate.

To get this far:

• I emerged the iio-sensor-proxy ebuild
• Restarted udev / dbus (This was a guess of mine, wasn't sure if it was really needed)
• Manually run iio-sensor-proxy as root as we'll probably need a service file.

I'll continue to troubleshoot and will generate an init script for the service (if its needed).

Thanks,

Gary

[Oleg Vinichenko]

thx for testing. the service, you mean it is systemd service?

[monkeymonkey]

I've tested the 2.3.  After going in circles a few times and then finally seeing what the ubuntu folks are doing, I worked out that 2.3 isn't working for the Dell XPS 9365 laptop (can't detect orientation of sensor).

However, 2.2 works and I tested by creating a local copy of your e-build with patch for version 2.2 and it is working well.

The iio-sensor-proxy is currently a systemd service (I think it is loaded dynamically by udev under systemd).  I'm quite new at this, but am happy to work out what the equivalent is under OpenRC or make an OpenRC init script for the service to run on startup.

I'll try and post to the bug tracker, but I think I've done something strange to my funtoo account which I'll investigate a little later.

[Oleg Vinichenko]

okey, so i guess you using systemd, right? i will add the init-script for the ii-sensor-proxy as it's mainly the goal of ebuild addition.

[monkeymonkey]

No, I'm using OpenRC.  I've just been running iio-sensor-proxy manually as root for testing.  It works fine without systemd.

Thanks very much for your efforts.

[Oleg Vinichenko]

okey, thx. was little bit confused about the service. does it work ok?

for the dell xps 9365 problem it could be a regression in 2.3 version, another problem could be that update to sys-app/hwids is required so that fixes for acceleration matrix in 60-sensors.hwdb could fix. I saw some fixes for the dell xps mentioned in hwdb.

[monkeymonkey]

Hi Oleg,

It works ok.  I did try the latest hwids (version 9999999 in portage) and that din't work.

2.2 works well though.  Thanks for your help.  I'll upload what I have to the bug tracker once I sort out some issue with my account.

 

[Oleg Vinichenko]

ok, i will add 2.2 version too, then