>Which I think is a critical point. If I run `emerge -p world` I get
(today) 82 packages that it wants to upgrade/downgrade/whatever.
>I wouldn't dare - my system works!
>That's the key, IMHO - if you only upgrade an individual package (and
it's dependencies) when you really think it is necessary (key new feature
or bug fix, or perhaps a security issue on an exposed system) then the
result is a remarkably stable system - despite the moving target factor.
>I *am* a little nervous to see what happens if any major package ever
*requires* a major glibc upgrade (sigh - hello! the C library is a solved
problem! leave it alone!), but hopefully we'll all have lots of heads up
for that. In the mean time, as long as they don't require the new
version, the existing core libraries can continue along merrily.
I actually use Gentoo on a majority of my servers. Some of them bigger
than others, and a few that are at least over a year old. For me,
security is paramount to stability. It's a tough call to make, but what
good is a stable server if you've got nasties breaking it?
Gentoo fits that policy well, since patching for security fixes is so
quick and easy.
A few of words of sysadmin wisdom (and comments) that I've gained on my
Gentoo-server journey:
* /etc/portage/package.mask is a beautiful thing
* USE="-X -gtk -gnome -alsa -kde -qt", it's a server--who needs
GUIs? Really though... less is way more.
* I don't care if my server's a hair faster at something. I'll take the
no-fuss approach:
CFLAGS="-mcpu=pentium3 -O2 -pipe"
* Update more rather than less... I know; BLASPHEMY!!
Seriously though, any problems are more manageable
in small updates rather than big onces. I do an update every
one or two weeks.
* When you do update, do it one package at a time.
* Backup anything in /var and /etc before updating.
* You can't be too careful using etc-update.
Practicing these guidelines carefully _do_ work. The uptime leader in our
small datacenter is a Gentoo CVS/Web/MySQL server that started on Gentoo
1.2/GCC 2.9x and survived the GCC 3.x migration and hasn't been down since
(even the 2003 Blackout):
13:37:51 up 323 days, 19:03, 1 user, load average: 0.21, 0.15, 0.44
And yes, it's up-to-date:
cvs02 root # emerge -up world
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating world dependencies ...done!
Yea, it needs a kernel upgrade to 2.4.23, but I want it to break a year
first. :)
-Brian
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