Re: [gentoo-user] another old box to update

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 8:06 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> openrc should be seamless. I forget the exact timelines, but IIRC you
> will also hit baselayout-2 migration. That one was very smooth and well
> documented so you shouldn't have much trouble.
>

If it is already running openrc then he is past that migration.

If it isn't, then it isn't exactly seamless.  You might want to give
thought in that case to whether long-term you want to be on openrc or
systemd.  It is probably as much work to migrate to either.  However,
I suspect that you're already on openrc in which case I wouldn't try
to throw a change like that into the mix - you'll be lucky enough to
get the thing to boot keeping things the same.

I didn't see this suggestion yet.  Build binary packages of everything
from a new install, and update using those.  Updating using a binary
package is far more likely to work.

Just create a stage3 chroot, set your use flags the way you want them,
do an emerge -e @system with buildpkg turned on inside, then migrate
those packages to your host and after a backup do an emerge -uk
@system.  Once you get the system set updated most of the rest should
go fairly smoothly, but you could extend this to other packages.

You don't necessarily need to do the first pass update with your final
use flags either - you could just install binary packages with generic
use flags and then just do an emerge -uN world to rebuild everything
now that you're past the hump.

-- 
Rich