Update World or Reinstall?

merrak · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:21 am Post subject: Update World or Reinstall?

Perhaps someone can give me a little advice here:
I'm still using Kernel 2.6.19. The last time I updated the world was about the time coldplug was replaced. Perhaps I've been a bad Gentoo user. At this point would it be easier to update everything, or just do a fresh re-install?
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CooSee · Veteran Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 1468 Location: Earth

Insanity5902 · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:53 am Post subject:

I would do an emerge -vauD world, look through what is being updated, make sure there isn't anything too crazy like a major glibc and gcc. There probably is, so I would update those first, then re-emerge world from there,

It is great knowledge to be learned by doing this.

Worse case, you fail miserably and have to re-install

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padoor · Advocate Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 4185 Location: india

find your xorg version. if it is still 7.1 or earlier it is better to do reinstall.
it is too time consuming and failure prone to update very old system files.
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merrak · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 3:48 am Post subject:

padoor · Advocate Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 4185 Location: india

you may get into lot of troubles trying to run upgrade.
i think it will be easier to reinstall with 2007.0 profile.
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BitJam · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:11 am Post subject:

One of the great things about Gentoo is that if you have a spare drive or partition then you can re-install from within your current system so you've got the power and flexibility of X-windows and all of the tools you are accustomed to using and very little downtime. Your current system also functions as a backup when you are bringing the new system to life. And finally, this makes it much easier to transfer data from the old system to the new.

Insanity5902 · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:50 am Post subject:

while yes, you might run into problems, and by probably I am pretty much positive you will.

If this isn't a main desktop, then take the time and do an upgrade. It can teach you a lot about not only the inwards of gentoo, but just system and linux administration.

I would still say do the upgrade.

emerge the latest portage first, it has a lot of advantages with displaying messages. Then follow the gcc upgrade guide, hopefully you are not changing your chost, so it should be pretty easy.

There are a few blockers out there, but some quick searches on the forums will show you the answer. Then there will be expat, if it hasn't been upgraded yet, do it now and run an a revdep-rebuild against it's libs as the ebuild suggest.

It shouldn't be that bad. I did an upgrade form glibc-2.4 and gcc-3.4 with a similiar number of packages as you about 2 months ago, and it wasn't a problem, just go in with your head straight and you'll be fine. it is good experience and you'll learn a lot.

Every sysadmin's answer now-a-days is to reboot or re-install, no one takes the time to learn the system to be able to save them from problems ...
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Zepp · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:22 pm Post subject:

I'd reinstall, likely to take less to time to get fully up to date and running again. If you want to spend the time trying to upgrade though go for it

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padoor · Advocate Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 4185 Location: india

from the given status it is not clear if modular xorg has been installed or not.
that is the second hurdle expat being the first. at any stage he can be locked out of the system
well as Insanity5902 says it is an oppotunity to learn the gentoo upgrade problems ,solutions.
if you have space in your hdd make new partition and start new install. you can have your cake and eat it too.
you can chroot into old system and finish new install and chroot into new install and upgrade old one. may be two different profiles like 2007.0 and 2007.0/desktop like i have in my p4 desktop. i have a laptop install also.
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jonnevers · Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:34 pm Post subject:

Insanity5902 · Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:15 pm Post subject:

padoor · Advocate Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 4185 Location: india

wow 1.2Gb download and emerge time of the files. he can give the command emerge -Du world after suggested masks and leave it on for few days. and forget it.

if this was for me my net speed will take days to download the files.and a week time to emerge them.
it is good idea if he has another computer while this is grounded for maintenance for good week 10 days.

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broken_chaos · Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 5:41 pm Post subject:

Set PORTAGE_NICENESS to something good. Use FEATURES="parallel-fetch". As suggested above, mask expat >=2 until after you've done the major stuff. First, upgrade gcc. revdep-rebuild afterwards, then binutils, then glibc (with another revdep-rebuild). Then do expat (with revdep-rebuild *immediately* afterwards), and the continue with the rest of the system (in some sort of order, if you feel like it - i.e. deal with blocking pacakges first, perhaps).

Once you're done all the updates, might be a good idea to run a final emerge -e world for consistency after such a large update.

Shouldn't be *too* bad, should it?

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1932

I would personally do the following
emerge -ae system (to make a stable, up-to-date base)

Then, I would
emerge -auvDN --with-bdeps y world (to update everything else that's outdated)

If something fails, run
emerge --skipfirst --resume (It will probably build after everything else is updated)

And finanlly
revdep-rebuild (to fix any broken dependencies)

Obviously, don't forget to run etc-update (or similar) between steps when necessary.

I updated really my outdated system twice when it was outdated by 6-8 months, and it was fine. I think I spent far less time than on fresh installs.
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merrak · Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 11:52 pm Post subject:

Seems like, as always, the trick is just knowing to do. Of course, one doesn't ever learn what to do without going through the processes a couple of times. It does seem a bit silly to just wipe everything and start over when I chose Gentoo, in part, because it posed a alternatives to avoid such hassles. Time is a bit tighter than when I first installed Gentoo and had time to play with the installation process until I got it right, so it's really a question of which is less involved. Compiles can always be done overnight... but until I perfect the art of sleepwalking then browsing the forums and figuring out what went wrong can't be done overnight.

I suppose if I try to update some of the very old packages and everything goes haywire, I'm no worse off than if I had wiped the system and started over.
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jza · Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2007 3:33 am Post subject:

I once updated a system (laptop) that hadn't been updated in 1.5 - 2 years. That was painful but I learned a lot and am glad I did it.
Also, I typically only do world updates every 6 months or so. I'll usually have minor problems, no big issues.
Also, personally, I hate having to do things(like setting config files, etc. ) multiple times, I'd rather break stuff and learn to fix it.
Just some thoughts, I think my suggestion is obvious

wrc1944 · Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2007 4:19 am Post subject:

I basically agree with what AM088 posted above. I use this procedure when updating a system that has not been updated in a long time.

First, emerge --sync, and check to see if you need to update your profile, and do so if needed, and do any /etc/make.conf editing needed (usually nothing, except maybe USE flag adjustments).

Then update to a current kernel, and reboot to it.

Then run: