1 |
Mark wrote: |
2 |
|
3 |
>Thanks to everyone who helped me get my system back after a couple of |
4 |
>world update snafus. Now of course I'm a little gun-shy about using |
5 |
>options like emerge --update world. So what's my best bet to keep my |
6 |
>system up to date, while protecting it from my own lack of |
7 |
>understanding of updating config files? |
8 |
> |
9 |
>Here's what I'm intending to do so far: |
10 |
> |
11 |
>1. Prior to running any large system update, back up /etc to another location |
12 |
>2. use dispatch-conf instead of etc-update |
13 |
> |
14 |
>Can anyone make any other suggestions? Which emerge options are best |
15 |
>for full system updates? Thanks |
16 |
> |
17 |
> |
18 |
dispatch-conf is probably the single biggest change you can make to |
19 |
reduce the chance of future borking (etc-update is bad news; stay away |
20 |
from it). If the diff from dispatch-conf shows nothing but gobbledygook |
21 |
before and after, then it's very likely you should simply use the new |
22 |
version. |
23 |
|
24 |
One thing you might do is add a comment whenever you make changes to a |
25 |
configuration file by hand: |
26 |
|
27 |
# added by Mark 7-28-05 |
28 |
foo="bar" |
29 |
|
30 |
Then the diff will show you clearly that you need to merge the files. |
31 |
Obviously, this won't work if the manual change was made through some |
32 |
utility. But then, you can probably just use that utility again to |
33 |
re-make the changes. |
34 |
|
35 |
One other thing I strongly recommend is that you clean up your world |
36 |
file. You really should have only the bare minimum number of packages |
37 |
in the world file to avoid problems like circular dependencies. I |
38 |
remember once, long ago, I had both kdebase AND the kde-meta packages in |
39 |
my world file (don't ask me how). I couldn't upgrade much of anything |
40 |
kde related until I cleared that up. Everything was blocking everything |
41 |
else. |
42 |
|
43 |
Use the dep script to clean up your world file. It's located here: |
44 |
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=907101 |
45 |
|
46 |
The one thing I would add about the dep script is that you still need to |
47 |
use your head when it comes to listening to it's recommendations. dep |
48 |
told me to remove quake3 because I had quake3-wop (which depends on |
49 |
quake3) and, thus, quake3 was redundant. I have decided to keep both |
50 |
packages in my world file because I may choose to unmerge the quake3-wop |
51 |
mod, but I'd probably still want to have quake3 installed. |
52 |
|
53 |
Other than in cases like that, I strongly suggest you listen to what dep |
54 |
tells you and consider making the recommended changes to your world file |
55 |
(and copy world to [.]world.bak before you make any changes, of course). |
56 |
|
57 |
I do an "emerge -Dup world" every day right after I "glsa-check." I do |
58 |
a "revdep-rebuild -p" whenever I wind up upgrading more than a few packages. |
59 |
|
60 |
If things go wrong during an emerge world, I have found it useful to |
61 |
emerge --metadata before resuming. Also, delete |
62 |
/root/.revdep-rebuild*.?_* if revdep-rebuild is acting strange. Then |
63 |
just try again. |
64 |
|
65 |
Also, bear in mind that revdep-rebuild doesn't work properly with binary |
66 |
packages like mozilla-firefox-bin and openoffice-bin. I always do a |
67 |
"revdep-rebuild -p" and then emerge the broken packages by hand. |
68 |
|
69 |
Oh, and remember to use the --oneshot flag when you're emerging a single |
70 |
package to fix a dependency. Otherwise, you'll wind up with redundant |
71 |
entries in your world file again. You'll have to keep your wits about |
72 |
you here again to decided whether a given package belongs in your world |
73 |
file or not. |
74 |
|
75 |
-- |
76 |
"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" - W. of O. |
77 |
|
78 |
-- |
79 |
gentoo-amd64@g.o mailing list |