Re: [gentoo-user] Sync'ing and compiling pkgs for multiple PCs

[Andrey Falko]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Simon <turner25@×××××.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>  Below I explain my story, I show some difficulties and near the end ask a
> few questions, but last paragraph is my main question, comments on the rest
> is greatly appreciated.
>
>  I have 3 computers and they are all setup the same with the exception of
> the kernel that has different options for the youngest of my pcs.  I'm
> looking for a simple, easy and efficient way to keep them all up2date.
>
>  I want to avoid 3 --sync to the gentoo servers.  I have tried to setup one
> of my pc as central server and sync the others on it, but has the main
> disadvantage that the other PCs are dependant on it (ok, it's not so
> difficult to change make.conf).
>
>  Then, I would have to compile approximately 3 times the same software.  My
> computers are slow, I am poor, can't buy new hardware (FORGET IT).  So I
> tried turning on buildpkg and compile on my fastest PC.
>
>  I already use unison to sync my /home directory through ssh, i use it
> because it is simple and does exactly what I need out of the box.  (Compared
> to rsyncd, where you need to setup a server, setup the firewall, what about
> security?...).
>  Anyway, I decided to sync /usr/portage with unison as well, which worked
> fine and I had the binpkgs on the other pc.  When I did an `emerge -k -uDN
> world` I found that many packages still had to be built.  I extracted the
> list of packages and versions, formated properly and emerged them all on my
> fastest pc, ran through the same routine and at the end I had to recompile
> just a few packages that I let run (nothing like gcc or glibc, hehe).
>
>  Now, with my "unison technique" I believe the only flaw was that I didn't
> have the list of all packages on all my PCs and I wonder if there is a way
> to generate such a list, similar to what `emerge -vp -uDN world` gives but
> in a format ready for emerge, so I can dump the pkg list for the 3 pc in 3
> files and run emerge on those 3 files.  I would compile them -1, which, as I
> understand it would upgrade my system (upgrade but not change world entries)
> and install unneeded packages around.  I would then use --depclean which
> would remove the unneeded packages cleanly and finally revdep-rebuild.  I
> would be left with my fastest pc's world up2date + all binpkgs of all 3 pcs.
>
>  The advantage of my "unison technique" is it's transparent to any 3 pc, if
> a pkg is not there, it downloads the distfile from the internet and compiles
> it, completely independant.  Just doing the --sync requires a little bit of
> consideration.
>
>  I'm wondering if there is (i'm sure there is) a better practice in the
> compilation of binpkgs for use by multiple computers, so that none of the
> other computers will compile (quick update for them) and that the compiling
> computer can compile all needed pkgs in one run preferably.
>
> As usual, if you can answer my question directly on the mailing list that'd
> be nice, if you could give URLs to some documentation that answers my
> question that'd be very nice too!
>
> Thanks,  Simon
>
>

I don't have time right now to answer all of your questions, but in
terms of having all machines have the same list of installed packages,
all you probably need is /var/lib/portage/world . This lists all of
the packages that you emerged. I.e. those packages not brought in via
dependencies. If you have the same USE flags set on all machines, then
you should not see the need for new dependencies to be brought in on
any of the non-compile machines.