1.4_RC3 question

RioFL · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Posts: 407

I have to install a new drive and was thinking of upgrading my RC1 to either Rc2 or 3, but after reading the release announcement, I am hesitant about RC3 because this is a production machine. If "one size fits all" compiled binaries means what I think it means, then they will be compiled with the most generic flags which will make it SSSLLLOOOWWW.

1. am I right in that assessment? or are they just talking about the boot cd image being the "one size fits all" and all of the main installation done by that disk will be according to my flags?

2. I must begin this very soon and will be hard pressed to wait till tomorrow to do it. Is RC3 that much improved over RC2 that it is worth the wait and lost income because of this wait? I am willing to do so if it is going to be *that* much better than RC2.
Major concerns are kernel/system improvements /stability and to a lesser extent kde and gnome. I use those, but mostly use fluxbox and when I need to run one of the heavyweights, I run it in XNest.

Chuck

simon · Apprentice Joined: 26 Apr 2002 Posts: 225 Location: Vienna

As far as I know, these version numbers are just for the install-cd's.

During installation you allways download the latests available stageX-tarball and make and rsync to the portage tree. So it doesn't matter what install-cd you use, it depends on the stageX-tarball and the current portage tree what system you actually get.

What packages are compiled during installation depends on the stageX-tarball.

I have always installed from a 1.2 install cd.

I know, there was a thread diskussing version numbers.

Simon

RioFL · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Posts: 407

Oh ok. So then I can use my existing r1 or r2 cds and wind up installing the rc3 packages anyway.. right. i keep forgetting about portage being completely independent of the version number:)

so then i wonder if i have to wait for the latest portage/emerge tomorrow or is it the latest right now. My biggest prob is im not sure what the differences in rc numbers are unless they fix install probs etc from the live cd. I am so used to a 'distro' being a specific version number, this is weird for me. I can use any version of live cd to get the absolute latest versions of everything via portage install of the entire system... Actually that's quite convenient.

Thank you for clarifying that for me. If today's sync will be no different than tomorrow's then I can just proceed and know i have the latest fixes/versions of everything.

Chuck

rtn · Guru Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 427

However, you should be aware that syncing and updating world has on
occassion introduced brokenness into some systems. You really should test
new packages and builds before you deploy them into your production
environment.

It's happened to me.

--rtn

RioFL · Guru Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Posts: 407

I'm not going to have a choice but to trust. This will be a clean install on a new hdd. The only things that will be taken from the old hdd will be specially config'd files (compared first and copying changes) and packages not supplied by gentoo.

Chuck

rtn · Guru Joined: 15 Nov 2002 Posts: 427

That's probably better, it's less likely that you'd run into a problem with a clean
install as opposed to upgrading from an old gentoo installation. I just did a clean
install last week and I had no problems at all. Just be careful with your old
configuration files, make sure you merge them with the new files as some
important core functionality may have changed.

--rtn

modal · Apprentice Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 277

Generally, when I do an update, to not let it b0rk my system, I just --emptytree the whole thing, so that it's installed as if it's a completely new system.