Re: [gentoo-user] Changing profiles

[Albert Hopkins]

On Tue, 2008-12-23 at 07:28 -0800, Grant wrote:

> >> I've looked over this:
> >>
> >> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml
> >>
> >> but I'm still not sure if I can choose any of the above.
> >
> > ... why?  Do you have a specific question?  Did you even bother to try
> > to choose one?
>
> I read a while back that changing from certain profiles to certain
> other profiles is impossible without a complete reinstall.  I'd like
> to change to hardened/amd64/multilib but also have the option to
> switch to default/linux/amd64/2008.0/desktop if I have problems with a
> hardened profile like I do on my laptop.  Can I do all that?

Wow, why couldn't you have said that in your first post?  It would have
saved a round trip.  Also, and I'm probably nit-picking here, but
usually when I see a "I heard that" or "I read a while back" my initial
thought is "What is your source" because a lot of times people will say
things and have no idea wtf they're talking about (myself included).

I couldn't find anything to support that, in fact the official Gentoo
hardened docs seem to indicate you *can* switch to hardened (though you
should probably read the docs yourself) but you basically need to
recompile *everything* after switching to hardened.  You should read the
hardened docs [1] and probably ask on the gentoo-hardened ML.

However if you just want to switch from 2007.0/desktop to 2008.0/desktop
that's perfectly fine/possible.  If people had to re-install every year
when a new profile came out I think they'd get ticked off pretty quick.

-a