Any suggestions to add stability to Gentoo?

hgerstung

Hi Guys!

I've been with Gentoo for a while now and it runs on my home server, my laptop and my office PC. I really love it and it is by far the best distro I have seen since my Linux beginnings (slackware 0.9x).

Eventhough I have some issues from time to time when it comes to emerging bleeding edge versions of software, I always was able to restore normal operation by browsing the forums, looking into bugzilla or asking the community for help.

However, a number of annoying breakdowns like a non-working nvidia driver or a broken database really challenged my Gentoo passion and currently I am trying to get my office PC up and running again because it was messed up after a "emerge -u system" call which broke gcc/glibc. A stage3 tarball is involved in this repair effort and I really hope the system is not FUBAR'ed (f*cked up beyond any repair).

While webrsyncing my portage tree I wonder if there could be some functionality introduced which allows someone to maintain a working toolchain no matter which problems occur. Some kind of "backup everything I need to rebuild any other piece of software" when things like gcc are messed up.

I know that the Live CDs are great repair-tools, but if I need to chroot into my (broken) installation I cannot use their working toolchain anymore. And, I will setup some kind of backup of course, but it will be hard to identify what I need to backup in order to be able to restore my system when things are not working anymore. My installation is already a number og Gigs in size and keeping a one-to-one copy would eat too much space.

My idea would be to be able to backup the toolchain with a single command and restore it (or switch to it) with another single command again. Maybe a restore system could be set up, with a working kernel and all necessary drivers and tools, which I could include in my grub/lilo boot menu.

Any other ideas? Is there any form of "Emergency Rescue Documentation" or "Keep your Gentoo up and running HowTo" available?

Kind regards,
Heiko

lesourbe · l33t Joined: 24 Nov 2005 Posts: 710 Location: Champagne !

look for stage 4 installation.
emerge only packages that will affect your system.
do not use x86 keyword
...
for my part I have always two gentoo on the same system,
-one for daily use,
-the other for tests/updates purposes.
as their configs are quite similar, it's easy to cp config files from one to another.

so I always have a stable gentoo
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hgerstung · Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 8:49 am Post subject:

OK, but using two installations is quite a big price for keeping things up and running. One could upgrade one system and if everyting is fine, rsync the other installation afterwards. If anything goes wrong, you could do it the other way 'round and rsync the messed up system to revert it to the state of the still running copy. My current Gentoo partition is using 30GB ... how big is yours?

I am really not sure if there is a solution to this problem, but I feel there could be a demand for functionality and docs aimed at keeping the system up and running.

Kind regards,
Heiko

lesourbe · l33t Joined: 24 Nov 2005 Posts: 710 Location: Champagne !

no x86 keyword and update only when needed should be your way then

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brazzmonkey · Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:09 am Post subject:

don't you mean : "do not use ~x86"
or can you build a system with no keywords at all ??

lesourbe · l33t Joined: 24 Nov 2005 Posts: 710 Location: Champagne !

hgerstung · Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:38 pm Post subject:

OK, you are right. You could simply do not use ~x86 and stay with x86 all the time, but I even experienced problems with a "x86" system and IMHO there should be a possibility to maintain a "way back" even on a ~x86 system.

I guess "backup" is the magic word and I will surely try to find a way to implement something like the above mentioned two installations just to be protected next time something went wrong with glibc / gcc or portage itself ...

Kind regards,
Heiko

loki99 · Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:47 pm Post subject:

I cannot recall the braking of any important packages (like gcc/glibc!)in stable since I use Gentoo! Could explain which packages you mean?

hgerstung · Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:55 pm Post subject:

Well, I remember that once my package db was f*cked up and all I could do about it was "rm ...".

I do not want to say that there is a general problem with "stable" (there is none, it really is, well, stable) and I am pretty sure that I did something wrong, but nevertheless I would appreciate a possibility to backup the core toolchain and system tools without having to mirror my complete installation.

Of course it is OK to say "Hey, you messed up your system, that's your fault!" but sometimes even Linux Gurus use "rm -r *" while in the wrong directory. If there would be a technical solution, that's just fine. Consider it a "nice-to-have" feature request :-)

Regards,
Heiko

lesourbe · l33t Joined: 24 Nov 2005 Posts: 710 Location: Champagne !

[quote="hgerstung"]but sometimes even Linux Gurus use "rm -r *" while in the wrong directory. If there would be a technical solution, that's just fine. Consider it a "nice-to-have" feature request :-)

/quote]
always use full path when doing such things

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DaveArb · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2004 Posts: 510 Location: Texas, USA