Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
On 01.12.2007 09:03, Alan wrote: This used to be a debian system and was moved over to gentoo about 4 years ago when I had been spending lots of time with gentoo on my desktop at home. I like gentoo, however I would exercise caution if you're deploying on real systems. We have also moved from binary distros to Gentoo a few years ago. Basically it was a choice between linux (gentoo) and *BSD. [...] The less updates, the less surprises and the less chance you'll somehow accidently break someone's site doing a simple update late some night. Gentoo is still a fairly moving target in this respect. Agree with the moving target bit. I think the secret is that if you run with gentoo you have to be prepared to upgrade EVERYTHING fairly often, and not bit by bit if you're uncomfortable with something it might be upgrading. I find that there are really two relatively pain-free upgrade policies for a production system. Either upgrade fairly often or forklift upgrade i.e. remove the old server and intall the new one. And yes, I do plan to just bit the bullet and backup, upgrade everything and then deal with any upgrade pains as they come. Just not sure quite when :) Good luck :) -- Eray -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Alan wrote: rollback plan. Apache, php, modules, mod_perl, etc. No biggie at all if it's your home server, but that's potentially a lot of downtime (ie: a couple of hours) as I compile, test, re-jig the config files, test more, etc. I'm in the same boat with postfix, running a 2.0.x when 2.2 if you're able, I'd look at linux-vserver or something similar where you can run a virtual machine (possibly using the same kernel), but in a different directory. Then you can copy a few websites/databases, perform the upgrades, fix what you need, document it (automate it), and then you can perform the REAL update. I had to do the same thing with the mysql upgrade from 3.x to 4.x. My apache upgrade, I just had to redo the configs by hand. php4 to php5 might be a bit more tricky. Currently that's the reason I have php5 masked... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
I wasn't going to chime in until some real deployments have been mentioned. Ditto. I run a home network that's pretty much gentoo-only. The server provides DNS, DHCP, LAMP, Posfix SMTP, IMAPS (courier), TFTP (bsd), SAMBA, NFS. I am currently pursuing a career in IT and expect to bring up some public servers towards the end of the year. needless to say, they'll be running gentoo too. I don't forsee any problems. I want to echo Ricardo's warning -- update conservatively! He's right -- after a while, you know which packages you can update safely and which are potential problems. Staging environment is crucial for gentoo becasue you'll be running binaries that have never really been tested ... or run ... ever. I run a home server under gentoo as well, which serves me fine as a personal box, and I also run a public server which runs on a fairly beefy server and hosts a few websites, including a TDI (the VW car) forum which is insanely popular and we push about 250G/month on it alone. This used to be a debian system and was moved over to gentoo about 4 years ago when I had been spending lots of time with gentoo on my desktop at home. I like gentoo, however I would exercise caution if you're deploying on real systems. The issue is the updating conservatively part mentioned above. As anyone who has run a server that other people are depending on knows, you REALLY want to update as little as possible. The less updates, the less surprises and the less chance you'll somehow accidently break someone's site doing a simple update late some night. Gentoo is still a fairly moving target in this respect. I upgrade packages maybe once a week and since I have fallen behind in some, I'm scared as hell to upgrade. I still have apache 1.3 running, and because it'd deprecated I can't update any of the packages that go along with it, meaning that to upgrade to the latest apache files, I have to upgrade EVERYTHING associated with apache with no really good rollback plan. Apache, php, modules, mod_perl, etc. No biggie at all if it's your home server, but that's potentially a lot of downtime (ie: a couple of hours) as I compile, test, re-jig the config files, test more, etc. I'm in the same boat with postfix, running a 2.0.x when 2.2 or 2.3 is available, glib, mysql (I did an upgrade where some new utf8 flags were enabled and suddenly a bunch of databases were invalid because the encoding was different), postgres, sqlite (more that I'm not sure what they link to that might be affected) and some other system packages. Now most likely nothing will happen on upgrade, but with some users who do business and lots of mail of the server, I'd rather not take the chance if the current setup is working fine. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid and sensitive, but I've worked as a sysadmin long enough to have seen (and caused) way more oh oh moments when an upgrade of something did something it really wasn't supposed to. The source nature of gentoo doesn't help here either. IE: I'm unable to upgrade curl or net-snmp on my server as both of those link to php, and because my php is old and non-upgradeable due to the deprecated apache I still have installed, upgrading curl or net-snmp would (and has) broken php and therefor apache and therefor I got a call late at night wondering why things were suddenly broken. Now here gentoo also made it (fairly) easy to rollback, as I just copied curl-$newversion.ebuild to curl-$previousversion.ebuild (the old version was long gone IIRC), recompiled and it all worked. This would have been impossible with say, debian if a binary package had broken something as there's no real way to backout to a package you don't have anymore (and that exact thing bit me when my server was running debian and partially why I switched *to* gentoo!). So while you want to upgrade conservatively, you can't be too conservative or else your current package versions will disappear from out from under you. That having been said, gentoo has a nice habit of providing a really comfortable environment for the deployment of just about anything. And unlike Fedora / Redhat, Debian, and some others I've used, there aren't any surprises when you go to configure anything. Another yes and no from me. The no part comes from package re-organization by maintainers which bit users a while back with the apache config re-org and before that something similar done to X. Not a problem exclusive to gentoo, but still an issue if the distro is doing major shifts here and there. I hope no one thinks I'm slamming gentoo here. I really do like it and have been running it and being a faithful user for years. I've just also been a sysadmin long enough to be a bit paranoid about production servers which have too many things being upgraded too often. I think the secret is that if you run with gentoo you have to be prepared to upgrade EVERYTHING fairly often, and not bit by bit if you're uncomfortable
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
First of all, thanks to everybody for sharing your experiences, very helpful information indeed, specially now that i need some guidance. For now, the conclusion i can reach is that Gentoo is perfectly adequate to use on a server with the only downside of the need to have special care with updates. Ricardo, i find really encouraging the fact that your lab uses Gentoo for their servers. Nevertheless it would be great if you could tell us a little about your lab's experience with updates, which seems to be the only issue when using Gentoo on a server. Another thing i noticed is that some of you recommend to have a secondary server to perform tests, i totally agree with this. Unfortunately i do not think that having such thing will be possible since the server will be charged to a client and i do not think they will agree to buy a second server (even if its the right thing to do, which i believe so), in such case, would you still recommend Gentoo?. Again, thanks to everybody for the information. 2007/11/29, Billy Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Robert Spahr wrote: I have been running these gentoo servers since 2003, with very few problems. Although I am conservative in doing my updates. I've run gentoo on several servers from dual intels running dns, squid, routing, to web servers, to quad opterons running as terminal servers. The secret to all of that is what Robert said.. update conservatively. The update from apache 1.x to 2.x broke some things (good idea to follow the update faqs, or as I did, rebuild the config files by hand), as did when the gentoo apache package managers decided to change the config file layout to better match other distros. Also, beware of some of the library updates. They can break other things that revdep-rebuild will have to fix. It's a good idea to look up via google or whatever to figure out what's being updated and why (read the changelog). It will take a bit to get used to, but after awhile you'll just eyeball it and know which packages are non-issues, and which should be looked closely. It's also a good idea to have a staging server where you can test the updates and trash it if you need to (virtualization will help with this a lot). Also, some updates don't fully manifest themselves till you restart all the processes or restart the machine. Processes that were running before a library update still have an internal image of the previous version's library. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Rafael Barrera Oro wrote: First of all, thanks to everybody for sharing your experiences, very helpful information indeed, specially now that i need some guidance. For now, the conclusion i can reach is that Gentoo is perfectly adequate to use on a server with the only downside of the need to have special care with updates. Ricardo, i find really encouraging the fact that your lab uses Gentoo for their servers. Nevertheless it would be great if you could tell us a little about your lab's experience with updates, which seems to be the only issue when using Gentoo on a server. Another thing i noticed is that some of you recommend to have a secondary server to perform tests, i totally agree with this. Unfortunately i do not think that having such thing will be possible since the server will be charged to a client and i do not think they will agree to buy a second server (even if its the right thing to do, which i believe so), in such case, would you still recommend Gentoo?. Mirror the setup in a virtual machine ;-) Those things can be life savers! -- Wayn0 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
It mainly depends on your own feelings. I think that a debian stable is a very good choice for a prod' server, but I really dislike the way Debian manages daemon and prefer the Gentoo approach. Updates are not painless...for sure, but you have to consider your needs first (what tools do you need ? typical web services ? extra lib from different languages ? any time reserved for maintenance or the server cannot be off ?). Then, updating is not a must. Believe me, an up-to-date machine is nice when you want brand new lib/features/softwares. Do your server need to be so.. up-to-date ? Finally, if you take time to estimate what should be updated prior to emerge the whole world, you can plan your updates and organize the way to go back if required and updates are not nightmares. (But have a look at the handbook: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2). You also need tools like dispatch-conf to undo easily your conf files changes. Gal' On Nov 29, 2007 2:10 PM, Rafael Barrera Oro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: First of all, thanks to everybody for sharing your experiences, very helpful information indeed, specially now that i need some guidance. For now, the conclusion i can reach is that Gentoo is perfectly adequate to use on a server with the only downside of the need to have special care with updates. Ricardo, i find really encouraging the fact that your lab uses Gentoo for their servers. Nevertheless it would be great if you could tell us a little about your lab's experience with updates, which seems to be the only issue when using Gentoo on a server. Another thing i noticed is that some of you recommend to have a secondary server to perform tests, i totally agree with this. Unfortunately i do not think that having such thing will be possible since the server will be charged to a client and i do not think they will agree to buy a second server (even if its the right thing to do, which i believe so), in such case, would you still recommend Gentoo?. Again, thanks to everybody for the information. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Quoting Wayn0 [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Mirror the setup in a virtual machine ;-) linux virtualization some links: http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/ http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/26/xen.html linux-vserver looks pretty neat, too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-VServer -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
After having used RHEL/CentOS and Debian in the past (for a binary system, I really like Debian), I'm at the point where I get frustrated working on a non-gentoo server. I had used Gentoo in the past, but in the last 6 months my place of employment has been deploying more and more gentoo servers. These started off as mainly development environments, but have since used them as mailservers, postgres servers, dns servers, ldap servers, and a dhcp server. After having used Gentoo at my employment, I converted all 3 of my personal servers from CentOS to Gentoo. While I love the power of portage on my desktop, it's become absolutely incredible from a server perspective. It's the flexibility of compiling everything by hand, but far easier maintenance and ease of use. As others have said, updates are the biggest drawback. For the most part, I stay away from system wide updates. I update: - When I need an update - When there's a security vulnerability fixed in an update For the security vulnerabilities, setup a glsa-check weekly cron (run after an emerge sync): http://gentoo-wiki.com/SECURITY_Getting_GLSAs_by_Email Also, revdep-rebuild is your friend (in gentoolkit). When you emerge something, always use emerge -av to see what is goign to be installed/re-installed. etc-update can cause you some problems if you're not paying attention. There have been times where I've merged a change without looking at it, because I thought I never hand-edited that config file, but in the end I did and just forgot about it (it was an init script). It's generally a good idea to review the changes for all files that it wants to merge. Some sysadmins worry about having a compiler installed on a production system, and there are valid reasons to be concerned, but most of those can be averted with a little extra care. In the end, I think the worry about a compiler is sometimes overblown. Finally, if there isn't a time of day that will be a down time of day traffic-wise, you may be worried about compiling apps will slow down performance on the server. Setting up distcc and having portage use that could be a huge help. Gentoo's a great potential system for a server. It's really flexible, and really customizable. The power or portage is an absolutely incredible tool, but it is slightly different than binary based GNU/Linux distros, and may require a little bit of a learning curve. As others have said, installed it in a virtualized environment so you can test things out could be of great benefit. Derek Bodner [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 11/29/07, Billy Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Wayn0 [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Mirror the setup in a virtual machine ;-) linux virtualization some links: http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/ http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/26/xen.html linux-vserver looks pretty neat, too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-VServer -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Rafael Barrera Oro wrote: The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org http://www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael Don't forget to subscribe to gentoo-announce and gentoo-server mailinglists. And off course is Gentoo suited for server! One of the largest Dutch social networking sites (hyves.nl) uses Gentoo Linux for it's servers, here are the specs: Hyves.nl servers: 450 64-bits Linux servers (Gentoo) 35 miljoen pageviews per day http://forum.nedlinux.nl/viewtopic.php?id=25934
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:53:57 -0500, Derek Bodner wrote: Some sysadmins worry about having a compiler installed on a production system, and there are valid reasons to be concerned, but most of those can be averted with a little extra care. In the end, I think the worry about a compiler is sometimes overblown. Finally, if there isn't a time of day that will be a down time of day traffic-wise, you may be worried about compiling apps will slow down performance on the server. Setting up distcc and having portage use that could be a huge help. Both of these can be addressed by not compiling on the live server at all. Compile on another box with FEATURES=buildpkg and, after testing, roll out to the live server with emerge --usepkgonly. -- Neil Bothwick The best things in life are free, but the expensive ones are still worth a look. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 15:01:19 -0300 Rafael Barrera Oro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael I wasn't going to chime in until some real deployments have been mentioned. I run a home network that's pretty much gentoo-only. The server provides DNS, DHCP, LAMP, Posfix SMTP, IMAPS (courier), TFTP (bsd), SAMBA, NFS. I am currently pursuing a career in IT and expect to bring up some public servers towards the end of the year. needless to say, they'll be running gentoo too. I don't forsee any problems. I want to echo Ricardo's warning -- update conservatively! He's right -- after a while, you know which packages you can update safely and which are potential problems. Staging environment is crucial for gentoo becasue you'll be running binaries that have never really been tested ... or run ... ever. That having been said, gentoo has a nice habit of providing a really comfortable environment for the deployment of just about anything. And unlike Fedora / Redhat, Debian, and some others I've used, there aren't any surprises when you go to configure anything. That, combined with it's performance and security, make gentoo the only choice for me. It's as stable as I want to make it and I expect it to scale well for my needs. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
[gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
I run Gentoo on a server, but it's just a hobby, low-end one. Athlon XP processor, 1.5 gigs of ram, raid 1 (hardware-controlled). I have a few daemons/servers on it, such as Apache, snmp, and an MTA. Runs fine. You might try talking to some of the web hosts who run dedicated Gentoo servers. Links are on the main Gentoo website to some of these hosts. On Nov 28, 2007 1:01 PM, Rafael Barrera Oro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael -- - Mark Shields
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 I run Gentoo on 5+ servers (the rest are Ubuntu Linux servers and OpenBSD). I have to admit that the upgrading procedure and certain Java/libs issues are making it a little painful to maintain, but on the other side, I LOVE webapp-config. It makes wordpress (for example) upgrading for 200+ installations a quick and painless task. - -- Arturo Buanzo Busleiman - Consultor Independiente en Seguridad Informatica Apoye la Musica Libre - Vote Futurabanda desde: (ver sgte. linea) http://www.frecuenciazero.com.ar/realityrock/votar.htm -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD4DBQFHTeeOAlpOsGhXcE0RCkw6AJY7D/Gdrei84glHHbutTg96/BX3AJ9P4tkm Tx25xSFjBIW8HCxBvg1w1g== =s5Mp -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
I have been using Gentoo for my server for several years. Just a hobby but I run the following services... Apache, MySQL, Qmail, VSFTPD, SAMBA, BIND, Squid and Courier Imap. Use Webmin for configuration and setting it up is easy as pie. The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Our main server, which hosts the Latin America Official Gentoo Mirror runs Gentoo. So does our Web-server. So does our Backup server. So does our datacenter. By our I mean the laboratory I work at (check signature). I see no major issue on running Gentoo on servers. On 11/28/07, Jason Carson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have been using Gentoo for my server for several years. Just a hobby but I run the following services... Apache, MySQL, Qmail, VSFTPD, SAMBA, BIND, Squid and Courier Imap. Use Webmin for configuration and setting it up is easy as pie. The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated best wishes Rafael -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- *Ricardo Saffi Marques* Laboratório de Administração e Segurança de Sistemas (LAS/IC) Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) *Cell:* +55 (19) 8128-0435 *Skype:* ricardo_saffi_marques *Website:* *http://www.rsaffi.com*
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
I can't claim to have done anything as fancy as Ricardo, but in my previous place of work I used Gentoo on three different servers to: Apache, PHP, Perl, MySQL, Squid, SVN, and other bits and pieces... Generally things ran smoothly... but upgrades did take some time... and I only trusted a small subset of the team to upgrade the PCs... Still... it meant that some areas got to move up from the technology that was offered with Red Hat 7.1 to more current technologies / versions... Never saw a problem with it... most major upgrades were done out of hours, and most of the customers were informed if there was going to be any loss of service. Fortunately they weren't 24/7 systems... mainly business hours 9-5... ...Ric On 29/11/2007, Ricardo Saffi Marques [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Our main server, which hosts the Latin America Official Gentoo Mirror runs Gentoo. So does our Web-server. So does our Backup server. So does our datacenter. By our I mean the laboratory I work at (check signature). I see no major issue on running Gentoo on servers. -- Ric de France Ph: +61412945554 (international) or 0412945554 (Australia) == Do you, uh... Gentoo? Gent-hooo!! == == http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml == -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Rafael Barrera Oro wrote: The issue is, as you should already must have guessed, if its a good idea to deploy Gentoo in a server. For the first time, i have the opportunity to install Gentoo on a properly set (almost pimped out) server and i wanted to be sure i know what i am doing before getting on with it. Where i work at, the tradition is to go with FreeBSD (which is, without a doubt, very stable) but since our FreeBSD guru parted i've been juggling the idea of starting to use Gentoo on servers instead of using it only on desktops. I have always found very useful stuff in www.gentoo.org http://www.gentoo.org, however, i have not found a specific server side faq. Does anyone know where i could get such documentation? Any pointers, opinions, faqs, insights, etc will be greatly appreciated I use 2 Gentoo servers for my work activities (I need at least 2 Linux deploy hosts for the database cluster product I participate in building). Since using Gentoo early in 2006, I haven't had any stability issues, and I'm fairly aggressive with updates - every month. Cheers Mark P.s: Funny - I use FreeBSD as my workstation os... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Robert Spahr wrote: I have been running these gentoo servers since 2003, with very few problems. Although I am conservative in doing my updates. I've run gentoo on several servers from dual intels running dns, squid, routing, to web servers, to quad opterons running as terminal servers. The secret to all of that is what Robert said.. update conservatively. The update from apache 1.x to 2.x broke some things (good idea to follow the update faqs, or as I did, rebuild the config files by hand), as did when the gentoo apache package managers decided to change the config file layout to better match other distros. Also, beware of some of the library updates. They can break other things that revdep-rebuild will have to fix. It's a good idea to look up via google or whatever to figure out what's being updated and why (read the changelog). It will take a bit to get used to, but after awhile you'll just eyeball it and know which packages are non-issues, and which should be looked closely. It's also a good idea to have a staging server where you can test the updates and trash it if you need to (virtualization will help with this a lot). Also, some updates don't fully manifest themselves till you restart all the processes or restart the machine. Processes that were running before a library update still have an internal image of the previous version's library. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
