On Sunday 09 January 2005 22:05, Kevin O'Gorman wrote: > On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:09:38 +0100, Francesco Talamona <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > This is not called for. I held off sync for about 2 weeks. Later > you talk about planning large emerges for when you can deal with > them. Make up your mind.
I have two gentoo boxes, one where I live, and another that I can seldom reach. I sync daily the former, latter gets synced once in a month, or so. This require to launch manually rsync from a fresh recent portage tree without --delete (to ease uninstall of obsoleted packages, that may otherwise "break" emerge process of sorting out dependencies) and use precompiled packages; and easily can result in dozens builds. For this particular machine I use a "not standard" update procedure, so it is perfectly feasible to have a sync once a month (or even more), but then you have to adopt the right procedure to handle it smoothly. > > I put a "signature" as comment in every /etc/ file I edit, so it is > > easier to sort out which config files deserve _more_ attention. > > I've been doing this for years, long before I ever heard of Gentoo. good! > > IMHO, anyway you should better > > - sync your system more often > > or > > - plan big builds when you have time to look them after. > > Again, is 2 weeks often enough for you? If not, your second option > doesn't make much sense. I completely disagree. I switched X a day I knew I could manage to be without X, backed up XFree (with quickpkg), compiled and installed, edited config files, and tested everything was ok. I did not mixed X in an upgrade job among many other packages. It took really fewer than I tought, but I was prepared to face downsides. I considered X switch a major upgrade, but usually I make openoffice ebuild run unattended: #emerge openoffice && halt if anything goes wrong it just sit there and wait, otherwise when I'm back home there's a fresh version of openoffice; despite its size I consider this a minor upgrade... > > Again IMHO ten minutes saved in a blind etc-update with a -3 or -5 > > switch don't worth hours trying to solve "strange issues", and > > potentially rock solid system crawling... > > Tell me how you examine 300 unfamiliar diffs in ten minutes. I do not! Familiar files are obviously managed easily, but stranger ones require more attention. Still you can ease your task choosing non standard way to solve the problem. For example you can experience that all files outside /etc, can be upgraded without a check. Usually I check diffs with meld, I find it faster and clearer than console diffs. At the end isn't the number of config files that counts, but how sanity of the whole system is bind them to. What about an error editing /etc/fstab? > Ten hours should do it, but I'd have a hard time staying focused. > No noticeable problems so far. I think all the -5's related to > config files I have never touched, since there are precious few that > I ever do. Printing, networking, fstab, ssh, security programs, > and X86Config; not much else. > > > Dispatch-conf may be better suited to your likings, tough... > > Why? I'm not complaining about etc-update, or at least not aware of > it if I am. This is not the point: suppose something goes wrong, you can blame _one_ file of 290, but which one? There's a backup but noone tells you what to extract it from! You can make a big jump forward with etc-update "-5" and a big leap backward restoring backup; a better way to manage this may be the possibility to make a step a time (both directions, of course). Last remark: before I ever emerge anything I run emerge with -p (or -a) switch ;-) Just my 2 cents ciao Francesco -- Linux Version 2.6.10, Compiled #2 Mon Dec 27 06:35:03 CET 2004 One 1.53GHz AMD Athlon XP Processor, 1.5GB RAM, 3022.84 Bogomips Total macula -- [email protected] mailing list
