in waaaay over my head.

[Zarphus]

alright. im in a nasty situation. i have minimal Linux experience, though i am a mac and PC technician. at the company i work for, it would seem that our website and webmail server are being run through a gentoo build. i'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around it since i didnt do any of the work on this server, and i am more accustomed to GUI interfaces. but the guy who made it quit, and he wont answer calls. my boss doesnt want to start from scratch. so i'm left being forced to figure out this build that someone else put together. i can't even figure out if it has a GUI installed. any help at all would be much appreciated, as i apparently have to become a gentoo wiz in the next 12 hours.

key points of help here would probably start with some command to query for getting listings of programs installed and other resources i have to work with.

[John R. Graham]

Zarphus,

Welcome to Gentoo. The main tools to work with are

• Portage, Gentoo's package manager, and
  
• gentoolkit, a collection of additional tools.

To learn about these, your first stop is probably the Working with Gentoo and Working with Portage chapters of the Gentoo Handbook. Why don't you take a look at those and then come back here if you have any questions.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

[Evileye]

Typically....

Configuration files are found in the /etc/ directory.
Users files are found in the /home/ directory
Website files are found in /var/www/localhost/htdocs/

A program called nano is the default editor used to modify files. Here is an example, if they are using Postfix for mail...

[John R. Graham]

Zarphus,

A few more points for you:

• Maintenance in Gentoo is not GUI based. You'll be working with the command line.
  
• Gentoo can be installed completely without a GUI. Many servers are. To see if you've got one, run the command

  Code:

  which startx

  if you get a single file name ("/usr/bin/startx"), then you have a GUI that just isn't running at the moment. To start the GUI, just run "startx". It's considered bad form to run the GUI as the root user so only do this logged in as some other user.
  
• The list of explicitly installed packages is in a text file named "/var/lib/portage/world". This isn't the whole list (for reasons that will become apparent as you learn more). The entire list of installed packages can be retrieved with the equery command (part of gentoolkit):

  Code:

  equery list -i

• In Linux (and in Unix before it), there's online documentation for essentially every command. Use the "man" utility. For example,

  Code:

  man equery

• Finally, although there's lots more that we could tell you, you might want to start by telling us what your immediate problem is. Something not working? Just need to prove you can come up to speed? What is it?

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

[NeddySeagoon]

Zarphus,

Welcome to Gentoo.

Another resource you might try is #gentoo on irc.freenod.net. There are many more #gentoo- channels on freenode but thats a good point of contact.
Beginners are welcome.

Don't practice your Gentoo on a production server. Find a spare box and do a basic install following the Gentoo Handbook
The few hours it will take you to get to the point of building the kernel will give you valuable experience in the way Gentoo works.
It would be good to do the kernel and boot into your install but its not essential for your immediate needs.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[wjb]

What is it that you have to do in the next few hours? And have you got any linux experience at all?

[djdunn]

I agree with neddy

installing gentoo is not so much like installing an os more like building one

the difference is like buying a car prebuilt and building it yourself.
_________________
“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

[depontius]

One thing to add to what djdunn says though...

Even though Gentoo is more like building an OS than installing it, more like building a car than buying one, Gentoo does what it can to make it easier to build. In other words, it's not as bad as it sounds, because Gentoo makes the building about as easy as it can. In a way, you're given a little fleet of robots that understand most of the dirty work, and you just have to give them some direction and do a few higher-level things yourself, and there is documentation for most of this. You still need to know more than simply clicking the "Install Now" button, but it's not as daunting as, "building your own OS" or "building your own car" makes it sound.
_________________
.sigs waste space and bandwidth

[Zarphus]

@depontius

while this may be true, this guy had a very unique method to his madness when it came to this server. none of it meets conventional methods ive seen. in fact, its a little scary. some of it is built to be autonomous, between it, and our two other server boxes, they seem to protect and backup their own settings and files constantly.

it turns out he wrote the code itself for a lot of it.

it feels to me more like an alien took car parts and made a rocket ship. reverse engineering it is going to be insane. a friend who does understand gentoo, just told me he couldn't decipher it. its a maze of automation and lockdowns. even if he makes a change, some backup defense mechanism somewhere restores the original. its like something out of an 80's sci-fi- in fact, much of his syntax when looked at contains constant star trek/wars/gate references hidden in it.

for the record, it is my understanding this guy quit working here to take on a job on government salary.

i think i'm screwed.

also, nope, no GUI.

[John R. Graham]

Zarphus,

I'll bet that a lot of this perception comes just from your own lack of Linux and Gentoo domain knowledge. Explain your goals and I'll bet we can help you.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

[Zarphus]

unfortunately experience is exactly what i need. my boss is essentially asking me to repair and rebuild our website. i dont even know web design, let alone this guys code.

[John R. Graham]

Okay, well, let's start out with that. What's wrong with the web site that needs repairing?

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

[Zarphus]

not precicely sure. it seems to be having access rights issues between it and our DNS server. but everything on the DNS seems fine.

[NeddySeagoon]

Zarphus,

There are two parts to gentoo. What is installed and how the install is configured.

The what is covered by the packages listed in the world file. Thats at /var/lib/portage/world. Please post the content of that file.
On a server it should be fairly small as therewill be no desktop. This file will not provide versions.

The optional parts will be shown in the output of the

[cwr]

In fact, you probably don't want to mess with Gentoo or, at least initially, Portage. What you
want to mess with is the configuration files, which are almost all text files under the /etc directory,
and the weird applications that the previous maintainer has installed.

First thing to do is to log in as the admin user, and make a copy of the /etc directory:

[cach0rr0]

[Zarphus]

looks like it's running through apache2.

it seems we can't even ping the server internally. if i'm lucky this might even be a hardware issue.

as for DNS, well, we also run a service request system and mail server through the same box i believe.

[chiefbag]

I'd say your fastest option would be to get your boss to approach the ex employee with cash in claw and hope that he has some spare time and goodwill to fix it.

In the mean time I would start building a box from scratch to replace your current installation with a platform you are comfortable with

Also as I would start doing some basic network diagnostics on the box, eg can you ping other boxes etc from that one?

[John R. Graham]

Zarphus,

Seems like one of two things is happening. First, you may not really want to proceed in an open forum with detailed troubleshooting (perhaps because of privacy concerns or perhaps other unknown reasons). Second, you just may not know where to start and thus need really detailed step-by-step troubleshooting instructions.

If it's the latter, several of us are willing to help. Just let us know one way or the other.

- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.