Re: [gentoo-user] emerge --update behavior

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 8:09 AM, Michael Orlitzky <michael@××××××××.com> wrote:
> On 01/02/2012 11:01 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>
>> I tell by knowing which files I want in @world. Everything in world
>> should be a package __I__ specifically want to use. Everything in
>> world (on my machines anyway) is something:
>>
>> 1)  I'd call from the command line
>> 2) Need to write a little software myself, most specifically a library
>> 3) Aid in displaying things, like font packages
>> 4) Something required by Gentoo that I don't totally understand, like
>> a virtual package.
>>
>> I just look through every so often and make sure everything seems to
>> meet those sorts of requirements. When I find a library or something
>> else then:
>>
>> 1) I make sure I'm clean with emerge -DuN @world AND emerge -p --depclean
>> 2) I'll delete the questionable item
>> 3) I'll see what happens with the two commands in #1
>>
>> To me it's pretty straight forward, but I'm also not bothered at all
>> by the idea that emerge package and emerge -u package do the same
>> thing. A machine that doesn't have a package, when updated, should
>> have the package and it should (IMO) be in world, but that's just me.
>
>
> Fine for your home PC, doesn't cut it on servers. I have the following in
> one of my world files:
>
>  dev-php/PEAR-Mail
>  dev-php/PEAR-Mail_Mime
>  dev-php/PEAR-PEAR
>  dev-php/PEAR-Structures_Graph
>
> which of those do I want? At least one of them was installed to support a
> customer's custom PHP application. Maybe all of them were and they all
> belong in world. No one knows, this server is older than the current
> --update behavior.
>
> So which ones can I remove?
>
> Solutions involving time travel and/or losing customers will be
> disqualified.
>

I'm not clear. You allow your server customers to modify your servers,
or what, they asked you to install stuff and now you don't know which
of them was needed and why? I'm just not clear.

My basic response, again allowing that I don't run servers that have
'customers' on them, is that 'equery depends' is the basic path to
determine if any of these are dependencies of other things in the
world file. If they are then they themselves possibly don't need to be
in the world file unless they meet my rule #2 as they are required for
some sort of development work your customer does.

I completely agree about travel time. My family lives 350 miles away.
I've managed their machines for 10 years this way and only once had a
problem that required me to get physical access. In the normal worst
case I have a Live CD with a couple of instructions they can execute
to get me back into the machine.

- Mark