Re: [gentoo-server] gentoo and portage in a large scale environment

[Daniel Schledermann (TypoConsult A/S)]

Joe Rizzo wrote:

>
>My current thinking is to have a limited portage tree that only contains
>ebuilds needed by the systems.  Included in this portage tree will be
>ebuilds for custom software packages.  The systems will sync off of this
>custom maintained portage tree.  I would like binary packages to be
>available from a central repository and not have gcc on the systems.  I
>would like to avoid mounting a network file system.  Am I on the best
>path?
>
>Functionally, systems will be imaged the minimal base image via
>systemimager.  After that, packages will be deployed via emerge.  The
>packages will be precompiled and available.  On going, packages will be
>updated and deployed via emerge.
>
>Please provide experience or ideas on:
>1)  Creating and maintaining a minimal gentoo image?
>
>
I've done it in quite a simple way:
1. Make an install of how you would want the base-server to look like.
2. Tar it in a tar-ball called stage4-<arch>.2005.0.tar.bz2
3. Upload to internal web/ftp.
4. Install next servers with stage4 :)
Of couse this isnt very automated, but makes for a quicker install than 
anything we've used previously.

>2)  Managing portage and packages for a large scale gentoo environment?
>
>
I administer a smaller but rapidly growing serverfarm of about a dozen 
Gentoo boxes. I distribute custom ebuilds with the gensync-tool from 
gentoolkit-dev and portage overlay. That way all my own ebuilds resides 
in a seperate place. I've been planning to create a second portage 
overlay for "stable" packages, and then only let "emerge --sync" update 
important stuff like php, apache, mysql and exim. Though I'm not a 100% 
convinced with the longevity of such a setup. I've found that cleaning 
up broken binary-packages and revdep-rebuild stuff currently is quite a 
headache, so something like this must be done.

/Daniel
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