Re: [gentoo-dev] Maintaining production systems - and losing ebuilds

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 22:45, Ron OHara wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 2003-11-10 at 23:39, Ron OHara wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 22:46, Ron OHara wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Lisa Seelye wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 22:00, Ron OHara wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>Hi,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>I want to raise an issue resulting from my experience so far in using
> >>>>>>Gentoo as the basis of production systems. Some may ask why? - but
> >>>>>>basically 'portage' seems to offer the very best framework for ongoing
> >>>>>>maintenance/admin of systems, though it's not perfect in that role.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>There are a couple things you may want to look into.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>First, have you considered setting up your own rsync repository?
> >>>>>Second, how about using PORTAGE_OVERLAY to save ebuilds.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>An rsync repository is another part of the production deployment issues,
> >>>>(especially for bandwidth issues) but ideally the overall process should
> >>>>not force me to duplicate the managment effort that already goes into
> >>>>maintaining the Gentoo portage 'repository'.  That work is already being
> >>>>done so it seems silly to have to manually administer a downstream
> >>>>repository just to preserve 'old' ebuilds - and even then, the true
> >>>>repository of which ebuilds are needed for a specific system is held on
> >>>>that system .. not on another server.
> >>>>
> >>>>To a degree, the same thing applies to the PORTAGE_OVERLAY setting -
> >>>>that tree may be a suitable place to preserve older ebuilds that are
> >>>>being removed from the central portage, but I dont want to maintain it
> >>>>manually on hundreds of systems.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Two words...
> >>>
> >>>NFS mounts
> >>>
> >>>=]
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>--
> >>>>gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>Hmmm ... NFS works when the systems are all nicely connected with
> >>bandwidth, but most of these will be unique nodes on a private microwave
> >>network (to avoid the local Telco charges .a.k.a 'gouging' - at $0.19
> >>per megabyte of traffic)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >That makes a big difference.  In that case, I would run your own rsync
> >mirror for portage and have all the machines sync to your mirror.  I
> >would also make a packages mirror, where you store your packages, and
> >have all the machines pull their packages from that site.  That way
> >nothing gets added or removed from portage, except what you specifiy,
> >and you also get the added upgrade speed and ease of binary packages.
> >
> >
> >
> I am assuming the deployment of a private rsync mirror (and packages
> mirror) - BUT - the current setup removes .ebuilds unless I manually
> intervene. Something I want to avoid. I just want to accumulate ebuilds
> by default to match the exact version of compiled code on each box. Then
> any given machine can be recompiled if required, without regard to
> accessing an external repository.

Well, what I would do is have the rsync mirror *not* mirror the
"official" Gentoo tree into its rsync, but rather into the normal
/usr/portage.  I would then manually move ebuilds for security fixes and
any upgrades I wanted into the rsync tree.  The same would be true of
the packages.  That way you only have *exactly* what you want and have
approved available to the client machines.

e.g. /usr/portage is normal portage tree, /usr/portage/packages is
normal package tree, /var/rsync/portage is YOUR portage tree.  I would
publish the packages via a web server.  The nice thing about this is
that you can standardize on quite a bit of packages.  If you wanted
everyone using KDE, for example, you simply don't copy any of Gnome's
ebuilds to your /var/rsync/portage tree.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

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