Throw in your second HDD, start an ssh session to the local box, chroot, and build. You can save a significant amount of time by just copying over the kernel from your current box, but really, in this case, I'd do the build through an SSH console, and then you'd have your primary box up and running for the duration anyway.
This allows you to build up the new box, with ZERO downtime (except the reboot). 2-3 days is pretty harsh. I built from a stage 1 on a P4 1.7 with 512 RAM in about 24 hours. Including all of X & KDE (which is by FAR the longest compile at maybe 18 or 20 of the 24 hours). I wasn't just sitting waiting, so I'm not sure how much time I lost between the stages as one completed and I didn't check back. Personally, I'd recommend skipping KDE until there's an ebuild for 3.3. Just last on the old box for a few more days. If you need, you can just compile the parts of KDE that you want, and then add in the rest later. (emerge kdebase, and other important stuff first, and then once you're using the new box, worry about games and stuff) I mentioned a variable yesterday or the day before for make.conf that should allow you to do this all without even really impacting your currently functional boxes performance. Be careful with Grub, or you'll just keep going with your old box. That's about the only major deviation from normal I can think of... It's cool to rebuild a new PC while you're still using it. Frankly, that's one of the things I like BEST about Gentoo. No downtime. Which is really ironic when you think about how long the compile takes... Out of curiosity, did you try just unmerging the packages you didn't want? I've found it to be pretty successful. It would be a shame to spend time rebuilding a box if unmerge was all you needed... Kev. On Thursday 26 August 2004 16:38, Shawn Grover wrote: > I'm rebuilding to bring the server services more in line with what I'm > doing now, and to clean up some left over crap from an attempt to get X/KDE > installed for remote terminals - never did get it working, but it's not > needed and have you ever seen how much stuff you have to do to completly > remove X from a box? These two points justify the rebuild for me. > > I don't have an extra box at this time (the server in question is a > PII-400, whereas my workstation is an AMD Duron and runs Suse desktop). > Compiling the kernel itself isn't really that big a deal, but it's getting > the drive partitioned right (I want to move my /home to a separate > partition - it's currently just a directory on the / partition), as well as > get the environment setup and installing/compiling the services I need > (with new/correct USE flags) that is the time consuming part. > > Yes, I'm planning on 2-3 days for Gentoo compilations. I can probably drop > that to a couple hours if I do a binary install with it, then recompile > things after installation. But I like the idea of a stage one install > where EVERYTHING is optimized for my server right from the outset. (guess > I'm a little stubborn, but I might reconsider this point.) > > Thanks for the response and ideas. > > Shawn > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Matthew Kent > Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 4:47 PM > To: CLUG General > Subject: Re: [clug-talk] Server Rebuild > > On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 14:31, Shawn Grover wrote: > > Hi gang. > > > > I'm will be rebuilding my server soon, and am looking for ideas on how to > > minimize my down time. > > Are you rebuilding to upgrade hardware or operating system? I'm assuming > OS. > > > It's a Gentoo server (if that helps). I considered maybe just putting a > > different hard drive in the box as a slave, then partitioning it and > > chrooting to that drive and run my installs there, then when ready, make > > the new drive the primary. Is this feasible? Is there a better way? Is > > there a way I can do this without requiring a second drive? If need be, > > I am willing to just wipe my current drive and start with a new install, > > but this will result in approx 2 or 3 days of being down. > > Interesting. If you have a spare hard drive and computer of somewhat > similar internals you could just build up your drive locally, configure > it as best you can, and swap them out. You could even precompile your > kernel to the proper arch as the new hardware, just to have it ready. > They'll be some bits and pieces leftover depending on how thorough you > were in mirroring the configurations, but it's not too bad. > > Is the 2-3 days you mentioned for a new install from Gentoo compiling? I > think you can guess what my next suggestion will be if downtime is a > serious consideration. > > > Thanks for any tips or suggestions. > > > > Shawn > > > > _______________________________________________ > > clug-talk mailing list > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
