Re: [gentoo-user] pre-emerge steps

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Michael P. Soulier
<msoulier@×××××××××××××.ca> wrote:
> Having just been bitten by some of my hardware being abandoned with the latest
> version of a software package I am left to question the entire philosophy in
> gentoo of always running bleeding edge. Not touching a system that's working
> is becoming far more tempting, and I'm curious as to what others here have to
> say about that.
>
> Part of the point of running Linux for me is to save money and run older
> hardware, but that doesn't work if the latest versions of the software that I
> like to use abandons that hardware.
>
> What do the rest of you do in preparation for regular upgrades? On BSD there
> was a /usr/ports/UPDATING file that I should check for notes on potential
> problems with upgrades before performing them. What's the best way to check if
> picking up a newer package could break my system? Ideally a way that isn't
> prohibitively time-consuming...
>
> Thanks,
> Mike

Hey Mike,
   Logically I'm not sure there is ANY way to know for certain that an
update will break your system. Better to plan on what you will do if
you have to fall back.

   I've lived through a bit of this myself. I have two older Asus
Pundit-R machines. They have built in video cards which have VGA and
S-video outputs. The machines serve as MythTV frontend boxes and I use
the S-video to drive a couple of TVs. Problem is that a couple of
years ago the ATI proprietary driver dropped support for the S-video
and none of the newer drivers work for me so in my case I had to set
up overlays to keep copies of the drivers and change my masking files
to prohibit updating of the driver. This has worked but I do wonder if
one day the older ATI driver will stop being compatible with newer
kernels and I may have to mask kernel upgrades also. Don't know.

   I would suggest that you make copies of your distfiles directory
once you have a machine set up and working. One BIG portage problem is
that when I do an eix-update portage will actually ERASE my copy of
the ATI driver source code from MY distfiles directory simply because
the portage maintainers have removed it from their end. If I didn't
have an overlay it would be difficult to rebuild my driver with no
source code.

   Anyway, after 8 or 9 years of running Gentoo I still run it even
with these issues. I'm not a sys-admin. I don't really know much about
Unix. I do appreciate the control I have over the system even if I
strongly disagree sometimes with what the portage maintainers do. It's
a good group of people and a very solid base to work from

Good luck,
Mark