On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 11:13:27 +0000, Stroller wrote: > > Any time you consider a process that involves emerge -e world, you > > should also consider a reinstall. A reinstall will certainly be > > quicker, the only reason for an in place fix is if you cannot take > > the machine down for that length of time. > > I disagree. The `emerge -e world` may take longer, but it will consume > less of *my time* overseeing it. > > Obviously this may not be the case if we're talking about a desktop > system in constant use, and the update breaks your web-browser. But in > all my use cases I'm going to be able to leave the `emerge -e world` > running in the background and just check up on it periodically. > > A Gentoo reinstall is not so easy as "click, click, click" and let it > run.
To a large extent, it is. you've already partitioned the drive, set up make.conf, created a world file, all of which can be reused. So a reinstall isn't much more than emerge -e world and recompile the kernel after emptying the filesystem. > An `emerge -e world` may break things, but it's not usually that likely > to. An emerge -e world is not likely to break things in itself, but the steps that require it, such as changing CHOST, are. The extra steps of a reinstall over trying to fix a machine with a borked binutils/glibc/whatever can be far more time consuming, not to mention frustrating, than a reinstall, and may only be fixed by a reinstall anyway after all that. I'm not an advocate of reinstalling normally, this installation is three years older than the computer running it, but when performing drastic low-level surgery, I believe it should be contemplated. -- Neil Bothwick Quality control, n.: Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand and add to the cost of its manufacture or design.
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
