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On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 10:01 -0400, Denis wrote: |
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> I'm curious to know your approach to keeping your Gentoo box current |
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> without it becoming a full-time job. I'm not talking about |
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> maintaining servers - just your "daily driver", so to say. |
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|
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I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "daily server." Did you mean to |
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say "daily workstation"? "Daily server" sounds more like a butler or |
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something. My Gentoo setup is basically (daily) workstation which |
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doubles as a file server, a laptop, a MythTV station, and a Xen host |
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with various virtual machines. |
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> |
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> How often do you sync with the current portage tree and compare it |
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> your versions in "world"? Should one do this once a week? Once in |
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> two weeks? |
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|
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This is really going to depend on the individual, being yourself. The |
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only thing I can recommend is that you don't wait *too* long to |
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sync/upgrade as it's usually a pain. Again, my setup: |
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|
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Workstation: usually every day depending on my mood |
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Laptop: About once a month |
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MythBox: As needed (new release of Mythtv, etc) |
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Xen host: New version of Xen/Kernel |
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Xen guests: base image updated regularly, other guests as needed |
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|
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> How often to you update major components, like Xorg, kernel, and |
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> system tool chain? As soon as new things become available, or, say, |
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> once a month or so? |
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|
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Workstation: when available (except kernel. I sometimes use bleeding |
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edge (using kernels not yet in portage) until something breaks and then |
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I get conservative. |
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Laptop: Once a month, or whenever next major release of GNOME is out |
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MythTv: don't worry about it that much. |
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Xen host: ditto, except for kernel |
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Xen guests: depends on what it's doing. If it's a web server, for |
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example, I try to keep up to date on apache. some guests have newer |
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versions of some packages masked because I require a certain version. |
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Try to not stay too far behind on Xen/Kernel but their releases are |
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infrequent anyway. |
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|
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> |
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> The reason I ask is because I often don't have a lot of time to devote |
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> to system administration on a regular basis but do want to keep my box |
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> updated as much as possible. How do some of you non-developers |
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> balance system administration with your "day job"? |
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|
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For some people system administration is their day job. For others, |
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they save it at for evenings/weekends. :-). It really depends. Is this |
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for your system at home (I'm still confused about the "daily server" |
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part)? If it's for home then I'd imagine most people consider Gentoo |
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"administration" as a hobby and thus probably do it as often as any |
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other hobby. If you mean at work, well I've only had one job where |
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Gentoo was used in the office (and there it was pretty much only for |
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workstations and "light" servers but in general most places I've seen do |
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updates on an "as needed" basis (i.e. security updates, updates that fix |
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a particular issue you're experiencing, etc.). Of course a lot of the |
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big shops use "enterprise" solutions like Red Hat Network or Red |
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Carpet/Zenworks. |
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|
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I don't think you're going to find a "hard" rule if that's what you're |
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looking for, but hopefully you'll get enough responses to be able to |
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come up with your own. |
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|
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-- |
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Albert W. Hopkins |
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|
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-- |
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gentoo-user@g.o mailing list |