Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Albert Hopkins <marduk@g.o>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] how do you keep up with system administration?
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 14:55:33
Message-Id: 1180450080.8155.52.camel@blackwidow.nbk
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] how do you keep up with system administration? by Denis
1 On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 10:01 -0400, Denis wrote:
2 > I'm curious to know your approach to keeping your Gentoo box current
3 > without it becoming a full-time job. I'm not talking about
4 > maintaining servers - just your "daily driver", so to say.
5
6 I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "daily server." Did you mean to
7 say "daily workstation"? "Daily server" sounds more like a butler or
8 something. My Gentoo setup is basically (daily) workstation which
9 doubles as a file server, a laptop, a MythTV station, and a Xen host
10 with various virtual machines.
11 >
12 > How often do you sync with the current portage tree and compare it
13 > your versions in "world"? Should one do this once a week? Once in
14 > two weeks?
15
16 This is really going to depend on the individual, being yourself. The
17 only thing I can recommend is that you don't wait *too* long to
18 sync/upgrade as it's usually a pain. Again, my setup:
19
20 Workstation: usually every day depending on my mood
21 Laptop: About once a month
22 MythBox: As needed (new release of Mythtv, etc)
23 Xen host: New version of Xen/Kernel
24 Xen guests: base image updated regularly, other guests as needed
25
26 > How often to you update major components, like Xorg, kernel, and
27 > system tool chain? As soon as new things become available, or, say,
28 > once a month or so?
29
30 Workstation: when available (except kernel. I sometimes use bleeding
31 edge (using kernels not yet in portage) until something breaks and then
32 I get conservative.
33 Laptop: Once a month, or whenever next major release of GNOME is out
34 MythTv: don't worry about it that much.
35 Xen host: ditto, except for kernel
36 Xen guests: depends on what it's doing. If it's a web server, for
37 example, I try to keep up to date on apache. some guests have newer
38 versions of some packages masked because I require a certain version.
39 Try to not stay too far behind on Xen/Kernel but their releases are
40 infrequent anyway.
41
42 >
43 > The reason I ask is because I often don't have a lot of time to devote
44 > to system administration on a regular basis but do want to keep my box
45 > updated as much as possible. How do some of you non-developers
46 > balance system administration with your "day job"?
47
48 For some people system administration is their day job. For others,
49 they save it at for evenings/weekends. :-). It really depends. Is this
50 for your system at home (I'm still confused about the "daily server"
51 part)? If it's for home then I'd imagine most people consider Gentoo
52 "administration" as a hobby and thus probably do it as often as any
53 other hobby. If you mean at work, well I've only had one job where
54 Gentoo was used in the office (and there it was pretty much only for
55 workstations and "light" servers but in general most places I've seen do
56 updates on an "as needed" basis (i.e. security updates, updates that fix
57 a particular issue you're experiencing, etc.). Of course a lot of the
58 big shops use "enterprise" solutions like Red Hat Network or Red
59 Carpet/Zenworks.
60
61 I don't think you're going to find a "hard" rule if that's what you're
62 looking for, but hopefully you'll get enough responses to be able to
63 come up with your own.
64
65 --
66 Albert W. Hopkins
67
68 --
69 gentoo-user@g.o mailing list