Re: [gentoo-user] EAPI packages

[hw]

Rich Freeman schrieb:
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@g.o> wrote:
>> On 08/10/2016 06:54 AM, hw wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I´m trying to upgrade portage because I´m getting a message that it
>>> needs to be able to work with EAPI 6 packages and can only do EAPI 5.
>>>
>>> I´m running into merge conflicts when trying to update portage, and
>>> apparently one of the packages (dev-python/cryptography) I could try
>>> to update first to be able to update portage requires a version of
>>> portage that can handle EAPI 6 packages.
>>>
>>
>> Try the other suggestions first -- but as a last resort -- you can
>> always grab a new stage3 that should contain an updated version of
>> portage and simply overwrite the portage files on your machine. A
>> quickpkg from another Gentoo machine (or the liveCD?) would also work.
>>
>
> A cleaner solution would be to just sync a snapshot of the Gentoo repo
> from the past.
>
> Pick snapshots every few months and emerge -u @system, and repeat that
> until you're caught up.  The only issue is if it needs to download a
> patch that is no longer available.
>
> In general Gentoo does not support infrequently updating systems.  You
> don't need to update every day, or even every month.  However, when
> you're going more than six months at a time without an update you're
> almost certain to have problems.

I infrequently update Gentoo because I´m *always* running into problems
like this.  'Infrequently' means about every 3 months at home, and not
since, IIRC, 2015-02 here at work.  The last update at home got stalled
because perl cannot be updated, and I haven´t had the time to look into
that to finish it.

The other reason is that it takes time to update the kernel when a new
one comes along, so updating like every week is not feasible.  And I
don´t want to reboot all the time.

Besides, I don´t want to update too frequently because there may issues
with new versions of software.

If you say that you need to update more frequently than every 3 months
for not to have problems with the update process itself, I can only
conclude that Gentoo is entirely unsuited for servers --- and for home
use as well other than for test machines perhaps.

> EAPI6 support was available in stable portage in Jan 2016.  The
> version of portage you're running predates the git migration which was
> a year ago, but fortunately by not a whole lot more than that.
>
> Here is a guide:
> cd /usr
> mv portage portage-old                  # for safekeeping - you can go
> back to rsync later if you want
> mkdir portage
> cd portage
> git clone --no-checkout https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo.git .
> git checkout 56bd759df1d0c750a065b8c845e93d5dfa6b549d     # Aug 8 2015
> emerge -u @system
> git checkout 1e65133983f404ea64079df0933dd820619a9b44     # Nov 1 2015
> emerge -u @system
> git checkout 47b868a553171134807fc949d2b84c2dc31b0477     # Feb 2 2016
> emerge -u @system
>
> By now you're into EAPI6 territory.  Hopefully you can get to the
> present directly, but I can give you a few more commits if necessary.
> I didn't test those out on an old system, so you might still run into
> issues.  I won't promise that this won't be a bumpy ride.
>
> When you're done you can swap out portage and portage-old.

Thanks, I'll have to see next week if this is an option.  I might end
up setting another server with Centos or Debian instead, despite I
don´t like either of them.

> And try to stay more current with updates...

I would gladly do that if there weren´t always issues when trying to
update a Gentoo installation, and if I had the time to do it.

> If you really know what
> you're doing you can update ancient systems, but it sounds like you
> want something that "just works" and on Gentoo this is not something
> that just works.

That machines can be kept up to date without running into weird issues
like I always do with Gentoo is a requirement.  That probably leaves
Debian as the only distribution that could be used when you don´t want
to remain in the past too far as you likely would with Centos :(

That creates a problem because ZFS is somewhat questionable with either,
and I don´t trust btrfs to keep the data save yet.