Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Derek Bodner <subscribedlists@×××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:59:47
Message-Id: 1a410e090711290853h34c2416eva578088a204c3a99@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side by Billy Holmes
1 After having used RHEL/CentOS and Debian in the past (for a binary system, I
2 really like Debian), I'm at the point where I get frustrated working on a
3 non-gentoo server. I had used Gentoo in the past, but in the last 6 months
4 my place of employment has been deploying more and more gentoo servers.
5 These started off as mainly development environments, but have since used
6 them as mailservers, postgres servers, dns servers, ldap servers, and a dhcp
7 server. After having used Gentoo at my employment, I converted all 3 of my
8 personal servers from CentOS to Gentoo. While I love the power of portage
9 on my desktop, it's become absolutely incredible from a server perspective.
10 It's the flexibility of compiling everything by hand, but far easier
11 maintenance and ease of use.
12
13 As others have said, updates are the biggest drawback. For the most part, I
14 stay away from system wide updates. I update:
15 - When I need an update
16 - When there's a security vulnerability fixed in an update
17
18 For the security vulnerabilities, setup a glsa-check weekly cron (run after
19 an emerge sync):
20 http://gentoo-wiki.com/SECURITY_Getting_GLSAs_by_Email
21
22 Also, revdep-rebuild is your friend (in gentoolkit).
23
24 When you emerge something, always use emerge -av to see what is goign to be
25 installed/re-installed.
26
27 etc-update can cause you some problems if you're not paying attention.
28 There have been times where I've merged a change without looking at it,
29 because I thought I never hand-edited that config file, but in the end I did
30 and just forgot about it (it was an init script). It's generally a good
31 idea to review the changes for all files that it wants to merge.
32
33 Some sysadmins worry about having a compiler installed on a production
34 system, and there are valid reasons to be concerned, but most of those can
35 be averted with a little extra care. In the end, I think the worry about a
36 compiler is sometimes overblown.
37
38 Finally, if there isn't a time of day that will be a "down" time of day
39 traffic-wise, you may be worried about compiling apps will slow down
40 performance on the server. Setting up distcc and having portage use that
41 could be a huge help.
42
43 Gentoo's a great potential system for a server. It's really flexible, and
44 really customizable. The power or portage is an absolutely incredible tool,
45 but it is slightly different than binary based GNU/Linux distros, and may
46 require a little bit of a learning curve. As others have said, installed it
47 in a virtualized environment so you can test things out could be of great
48 benefit.
49
50 ----
51 Derek Bodner
52 subscribedlists@×××××××××××.com
53
54 On 11/29/07, Billy Holmes <billy@××××××.net> wrote:
55 >
56 > Quoting Wayn0 <wayn0.ml@×××××.com>:
57 >
58 > > Mirror the setup in a virtual machine ;-)
59 >
60 > linux virtualization
61 >
62 > some links:
63 >
64 > http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/
65 > http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/26/xen.html
66 >
67 > linux-vserver looks pretty neat, too
68 >
69 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-VServer
70 >
71 > --
72 > gentoo-user@g.o mailing list
73 >
74 >

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on the server side Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk>