Gentoo 4 server

dentharg · Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2004 2:23 pm Post subject: Gentoo 4 server

How many of you would consider Gentoo for a server?
What cons/pros you think of (like long software installation b/c of compiling).

JPMRaptor · Guru Joined: 04 Oct 2002 Posts: 410 Location: Maryland

I'd do it. The compiling is not as big a deal to me on a server as on a desktop (unless your server is normally heavily used). You can set the niceness of portage so it shouldn't affect normal usage. Plus for me the big emerges are all the desltop apps (kde, ...) not the server apps.
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dentharg · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 6:26 am Post subject:

And if something gets broken in portage, like earlier problems with baselayout?
Is it sensible to precompile binary packages of updates?

ewan.paton · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:22 am Post subject:

assuming its being run like i would run my server, ie everyting its tested and checked long before it hits production then probably but even the if my job were on the line i would be skeptical, its just a bit too much of a moving target and certainly a fire and forget distro you can script to emerge -ud world every week
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McManus · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 7:58 pm Post subject:

I run Gentoo as my server, for everything from web & email to cvs & subversion. It works great and is really easy to upgrade, BUT upgrading can sometimes break things (*cough* etc-update auto-overwriting files *cough*), but it's pretty trivial to re-emerge an older, working version (although it takes time).

I guess for a hobbyist with non-mission-critical services, it's cool, but I would never dream of using it in a production environment (where everything should be updated by hand, one dependency at a time >_< ).
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F.Ultra · Apprentice Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 169 Location: Sweden

I run gentoo on some 50+ mission-critical servers, and I must honestly say that I do not understand what every one is so afraid of.

If etc-update has overwritten files, this is probably because you have told it to do so, and not something that you can seriously blame gentoo for.

Naturally one would never put a cron job to emerge world, that would be plane stupid in a production environment. What you do is check the GLSA for security holes in your software and only upgrades those packages that are affected, and nothing more. And naturally you would test the updated server quite seriously before you would put it back in production.

I fail to see the huge difference towars any other distribution in this regard, eccept for the fact that compilation will make gentoo take longer to upgrade, but hey I earn much money from working overtime so

kashani · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:31 pm Post subject:

Running Gentoo as a server is a bit more complex than running say, Redhat. In the end though it tends to same be time once I learned what was likely to break and what wasn't.

I have two servers I use as testers for work. My private box and a full on test box. Between the two of them I generally know if a package is going to cause problems or not. I also tend to wait on updates that are going to be problematic.

New mod_php? I'll update that right away. New gcc or glibc version? I think I'll wait a month before doing that.

In general I've got about ten servers in production and have only had one cusotmer facing problem in the past 6 months. A perl package was eating HTML mails coming into the ticketing system. And this was actually not a Gentoo problem ultimately.

kashani
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