Gentoo not useable as Server?

Gentoo Server · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 279

I was told Gentoo is not useable as a server and I plan to use it as a server

Is it true that Gentoo is not 100% usable as a server because less stable then e.g. Suse or RedHat server?

Cosmin · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2004 11:22 am Post subject:

False. It is as stable as any other distro, as much as I know. But it's a real pain to configure every service. You don't have "point-and-click" tools from SuSE, RedHat or Mandrake. But this can be a false impression, too. The documentation is exhaustive and intuitive, so I found that, after 30 minutes of docs reading, I was able to start a NFS server with only few lines in config files and few commands. This gave me a better insight of Linux and how things work. I had to find that, for NFS, I had to start portmap first. Stupid, I know. I had to configure it, too. And it worked just perfectly!
I even found that it's easier to mantain some text files than wandering in a GUI tool. Really! You can make changes faster, and restarting a service is painless. Of course, you will have to type more, but the benefits are great.
I do almost all the maintenance stuff without starting a window manager... I start it when I want to listen music, watch movies, play games...

Gentoo Server · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 279

so we have the choose between Red Hat ES 3.0 and Gentoo

I know Gentoo and my friends know Gentoo too

Gentoo is painless to maintain emerge is the way

How about RH ES ?

(I have a working 6 month Gentoo server at home)

dkaplowitz · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2004 12:16 pm Post subject:

Run OpenBSD or FreeBSD as a server. They are mega-simple, quick to install, very easy to configure and BSD is a rock-solid (true Unix) server platform. Run Gentoo as a desktop. Don't run Redhat if you can avoid it.
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Gentoo Server · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 279

well the pushed us real hard to install rh8 as server now in 2/2004

because of security & stabilty

gentoo compared is unsecure and unstable

rafael · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 267

... not if configured properly

bcore · n00b Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 59 Location: Toronto

Maybe you should post what kind of server you want to set up.. "Server" doesn't really say much. I've been running gentoo for two years with an X server with no problems.

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cirofren · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 8:03 am Post subject:

I've been running a mail (exim), web (apache) servers on a gentoo box for about eight months now, no problems at all, in fact I liked that I didn't have to bother installing X or anything else just to set up a few services. It's clean, crisp, and fast.

jstelly · n00b Joined: 28 Dec 2003 Posts: 70

I can see the argument that Gentoo isn't as stable as RedHat. RedHat has much tighter version control of which packages go out on which release. With Gentoo you get whatever the latest version marked as stable in emerge / portage happens to be. Not to say that things don't get tested before they're marked stable, but Gentoo is a constantly moving target where RedHat has the luxury of doing a full QA pass on one version of their OS every 6 months.

But that aside, I've found Gentoo to be rock-solid personally and I prefer it to RedHat. The locations of files across different services seems more uniform on Gentoo. On RedHat it seems like the config files for apache are in a different location than proftp, sshd or (name your service here). Of course I'm talking about RPM installs here.

If it were me, if you're talking about a mission-critical box with SLAs for uptime and stability then it's a no-brainer. Go with RedHat ES for the support agreement if nothing else. If it's anything less than that I'd go with Gentoo because I think it's a better OS overall.

DumbAss · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 8:44 am Post subject:

At the moment I am trying to set up a gentoo box as mail server.
Before I got adicted to Gentoo, I used Mandrake a lot. But now I realise I didn't know exactly what was going on on my system. With Gentoo I know a lot better what is going on and that makes administrating a system a lot easier. With the help of webmin and some ncurses-tools more difficult tasks are made easy too.
The only drawback I can think of is the frequent updates of packages (for a server, not for a desktop!) I would like to see, just like the ~x86 branch, a rock-stable branch with older but really stable and tested packages.
Just a thought though.

inode77 · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 9:15 am Post subject:

>I can see the argument that Gentoo isn't as stable as RedHat. RedHat has >much tighter version control of which packages go out on which release. >With Gentoo you get whatever the latest version marked as stable in >emerge / portage happens to be. Not to say that things don't get tested >before they're marked stable, but Gentoo is a constantly moving target >where RedHat has the luxury of doing a full QA pass on one version of their >OS every 6 months.

I don't think they have a bettter QA of their binaries than gentoo. If you read the changlogs before merging and wait a little for feedback from other users then you'll have better QA than RH ever can offer. Or better you emerge and test on testserver and when you consider is stable AND necessary emerge (not just the hunt for highest versionnumebers) then merge it to you real server.

jaska · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 9:25 am Post subject:

Gentoo is as stable as you want/need it to be when configured proplerly. However if this "server" you are building is in mission critical usage then debian or *BSD might suit the job better.

plate · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 10:30 pm Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

radulucian · Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2004 11:23 pm Post subject: real-life proof

i am using gentoo on two SERVER machines now

first one does the following
- routing and masquerading for the internal lan with detailed reporting
- samba for the internal lan as PDC
- ftp server with virtual accounts
- web server with php and mysql without serious load
- mail server with multiple virtual domains based on qmail + vpopmail + ezmlm + qmailadmin + spamassassin + f-prot
- shorewall firewall

mastergoon · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 12:04 am Post subject:

I run gentoo on servers, remember you dont have to update a package just because theres a new version out, no need to stay cutting edge if you dont want to.

Right now my company has 2 gentoo setups. We have 4 production boxes and 4 testing boxes. 1 box on each is the router/firewall (openbsd) then we use gentoo for a webserver, db server, and dns/mail server.

madmango · Guru Joined: 15 Jul 2003 Posts: 507 Location: PA, USA

I'm running gentoo on a server (home network though)

and it's great. Fantastic. Better, faster, stronger than redhat server or any mandrake stuff i put on it.

I use gentoo-sources and have no stability issues, but if you're parinoid, use gs-sources and forgiving cflags.

Works great.
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Spawn of Lovechild · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:13 pm Post subject:

if you are careful with the optimizations, something like -O2 -march=foo and use hardened gcc I would think that Gentoo was more secure than your average linux distro.

I see no technical reason why not to use a tool like portage on a server, the GLIS are normally up to date and if you stay with secure channels like the stable gentoo tree.. why not?

Gentoo is a bit slower to setup, but hardened gcc is a really good server addition, and the new enterprise Gentoo will certainly be the juice for added stability
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Avernus- · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Posts: 15

I find Gentoo to be just as stable (if not more) than any of the other major distro's.

The only real issue I would have of using it in a server environment is time.

When dealing with servers (expecially hundreds) you simply dont have a day or two to install an OS. Also while maintaining packages with emerge is very easy, this can also be very time consuming (depending on the package your upgrading). It simply becomes unfeasable.

Now, if this is your only server and this isnt an issue for you go for it.

For me:

Gentoo = Perfect Desktop, can run as close to the bleeding edge as I choose (kernel/package wise) and installing packages (while time consuming) is easy.

Suse/Redhat/Mand = Better for servers, while RPM dependencies are a pain when using as a desktop this really isnt a huge issue on a server (cause face it for the most part your going to be running software that is included with this disk... apache/postfix/sendmail/samba/etc). The ability to start with an unloaded server and have it up in 30 min or less is also a huge plus.

christsong84 · Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2004 9:58 pm Post subject:

*shrugs* I run a server on mine sevicing about 15 users...haven't rebooted for anything in the last 6 months...running on a P3-450MHz, 1GB PC133 (yes that's right...old and slow) ram. It's quite stable running a firewall, samba, postfix, apache, mysql, and a few other services I can't remember off the top of my head. It serves as a file/print, mail, web-development/testing server just fine for me. It's really all in the configuration...it's no worse than running any linux distro really.
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Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

I got a Pent III 650 with 384MB of good ol PC100 on an on BX board running MM-2.6.x? (i forget) but it runs faster and more stable than redhat 9 ever did on my faster p4 1.7 and uses alot less rescources.

As far as stability I find that every once in awhile portage breaks because some ebuild fails to compile but it usually only affects building a new system and is resolved pretty quickly.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Already several threads on this topic.
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