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Technomancer wrote: |
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>I'm building 2 Gentoo servers at work. One of them will run a |
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>Postfix+Mysql+Courier Imap system and the other will be a LAMP |
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>machine. They both will run on a mid-end corporate environment. |
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> |
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>I'm using the hardened profile and kernel. |
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> |
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>I choosed Gentoo because using other distros I could not build the |
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>system the way I wanted without headache. |
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> |
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>On most cases there was the necessity of package compilation, ignoring |
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>the package management systems of most distros. This sounds like chaos |
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>to me. |
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> |
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> |
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Agreed. |
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>Using Portage I coul add and remove features of programs like Postfix |
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>without making some ugly workaround. |
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> |
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>Some people keep telling me that I'm mad and Gentoo is a poor choice |
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>for servers. I don't agree with that. |
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> |
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>I wish to hear sugestions and advices about Gentoo Servers, how could |
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>I maintain the system up to date without breaking etc etc. |
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> |
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> |
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> |
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First: Gentoo is not a poor choice for servers. It does well what you |
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need in a server: control. In my company we have deployed something like |
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20 servers with Gentoo: web servers, mail servers, database servers, |
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file servers, backup servers, you name it. We have used RedHat and |
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Debian in the past, and the Gentoo servers seems to be less trouble. |
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They are much more "just works". |
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Upgrading: |
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Make binary packages of the stuff you've merged. In make.conf add |
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"buildpkg" to FEATURES. That way you can alway roll-back quickly, if an |
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upgrade breaks something. |
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You need to watch out for major changes. For example: |
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- The changes around xpdf and poppler. |
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- The shift from dev-php/php,mod_php and cgi_php to dev-lang/php. |
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- The new apache-config layout. |
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- The new ftp-base dependencie to proftpd. |
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Read up on the changes BEFORE upgrading anything untrivial. For example |
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the changed php-build required some new USE-flags in order not to break |
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our servers. |
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This is accually the biggest headache with Gentoo. The portage tree is |
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just not stable. |
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Using binary packages: |
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Compiling on a production box is not cool, so we have tried using binary |
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packages build on a central server, but portage just doesnt do it well. |
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The PHP-builds have often had missing dependencies when merged from a |
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"remote binary". |
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There is a couple of alternatives that will allow custom packages the |
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same way Gentoo does, while not forcing you to compile everything. |
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- The FreeBSD system is not as flexible as Gentoo, as it operates with a |
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"base-system", but it does have a build system similar to portage, while |
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still having binaries of the most common packages. But it is not Linux, |
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and it has a very different init-system (BSD-init). |
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- Another alternative is Arch Linux, which also has binary packages, but |
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also a portage-like build system. This IS linux, but uses BSD-init, and |
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does not seem as mature as Gentoo or FreeBSD. |
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/Daniel |
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