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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54478
Location: 56N 3W
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 Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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Moved from Dustbin to Gentoo Chat.
I fat fingered a split and ban. Sorry about this topic being in the bin for a few minuets.
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Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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HungGarTiger
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Joined: 04 Feb 2014
Posts: 180
Location: /nz/auckland
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:07 am Post subject: |
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Fat Finger Necromancy  |
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20140
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:22 am Post subject: |
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Often used after Power Word Kill.
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Spanik
l33t
Joined: 12 Dec 2003
Posts: 964
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Just saw it after it's resurrection. I must say I agree with the OP. I feel even weekly updates might not be enough to keep up. A single minor fart in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or any of the others and the house of cards crashes.
I just gave up. I install it, put everything on it that I need and then then just continue to use it until I need something extra or a hardware piece fails. Then I just start over again. The chance that something you regulary use (or are using) breaks so you end up blocked is just too large to take the risk of updating.
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Jaglover
Watchman
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 8291
Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Spanik wrote: | | Just saw it after it's resurrection. I must say I agree with the OP. I feel even weekly updates might not be enough to keep up. A single minor fart in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or any of the others and the house of cards crashes. |
House of cards? Your Gentoo is a house of cards? I'm glad my Gentoo is not like that, all my installations are strong as rock. Nowadays I practically never use my laptop, I boot it once in 1-2 months for updating, running ~amd64, no problems with updates.
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My Gentoo installation notes.
Please learn how to denote units correctly! |
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Spanik
l33t
Joined: 12 Dec 2003
Posts: 964
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Jaglover wrote: | | Spanik wrote: | | Just saw it after it's resurrection. I must say I agree with the OP. I feel even weekly updates might not be enough to keep up. A single minor fart in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or any of the others and the house of cards crashes. |
House of cards? Your Gentoo is a house of cards? I'm glad my Gentoo is not like that, all my installations are strong as rock. Nowadays I practically never use my laptop, I boot it once in 1-2 months for updating, running ~amd64, no problems with updates. |
It is stable once up and running, I give you that. But after any changes, however minor in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or other lib, portage and the updates grind to a halt with loads of slot conflict, circular dependencies and blockers. It normally takes me longer to deal with that then to reinstall. Alltough the last install took me also over a week to get -with the hulp of the forum- to a working system. The desktop is now up for a new install. The shit portage trows up is larger than the buffer of the terminal.
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pietinger
Moderator
Joined: 17 Oct 2006
Posts: 4495
Location: Bavaria
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Spanik wrote: | | [...] with loads of slot conflict, circular dependencies and blockers. It normally takes me longer to deal with that then to reinstall. [...] |
This is not true if you have a brave stable gentoo installation ... because our developers tested it. You can run into problems if you try your own special configuration. If you dont like the stable GCC it is fine when you try the intel compiler but dont expect our developers to test all unusual configurations. If you update a "rock-solid" stable gentoo once a month you cannot run into any (big) problems. And a small problem is solved in this forums within one or two days ...
I can remember you when you critiziced the AMD64-handbook ... yes, it is not perfect ... but you dont have so much freedom of choice for your own linux in any other distribution than gentoo. |
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skellr
l33t
Joined: 18 Jun 2005
Posts: 977
Location: The Village, Portmeirion
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| Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2021 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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I'm trying not to too be snarky, but, can you leave any rolling release distro for 4-6 months and have no issues with updates?
Not saying anything "LTS" is the way to go, they just guess for you and make their own problems in different ways. |
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HungGarTiger
Apprentice
Joined: 04 Feb 2014
Posts: 180
Location: /nz/auckland
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 12:41 am Post subject: |
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| pietinger wrote: | | the AMD64-handbook ... yes, it is not perfect ... |
Thems fightin' words, Sir. |
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figueroa
Advocate
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 2978
Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 3:54 am Post subject: |
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| Spanik wrote: | | Jaglover wrote: | | Spanik wrote: | | Just saw it after it's resurrection. I must say I agree with the OP. I feel even weekly updates might not be enough to keep up. A single minor fart in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or any of the others and the house of cards crashes. |
House of cards? Your Gentoo is a house of cards? I'm glad my Gentoo is not like that, all my installations are strong as rock. Nowadays I practically never use my laptop, I boot it once in 1-2 months for updating, running ~amd64, no problems with updates. |
It is stable once up and running, I give you that. But after any changes, however minor in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or other lib, portage and the updates grind to a halt with loads of slot conflict, circular dependencies and blockers. It normally takes me longer to deal with that then to reinstall. Alltough the last install took me also over a week to get -with the hulp of the forum- to a working system. The desktop is now up for a new install. The shit portage trows up is larger than the buffer of the terminal. |
Reluctantly quoting the entire thread for context. @Spanik, this just isn't true, and your rant is poisoning the well for newer users. I've been maintaining what was originally an x86 desktop, now server, since 2004, often with monthly or less frequent updates, with limited but always solvable problems.
Likewise, my x86 low-power laptop I've been maintaining even less frequently, recently more or less monthly, but zero problems, since 2009.
My current desktop, 64 bit, was a stage3 install about three years ago with configuration files and world copied from the 2004 x86 system. I have a handful of other systems that I maintain, local and remote.
Perl changes have never been a problem. Moving through different Python defaults have been difficult in the past, but follow instructions and be reasonably persistent, and in the end no big deal. The recent change of default to Python 3.9 was miraculously easy.
I don't have weird custom configurations; I stay Gentoo standard and stable. I can count my ~ package on one hand. I've never had to do a new install to "fix" a broken one.
Here is the mantra: Gentoo is a build-your-own-from-source-distribution tool kit. Changes follow the upstream sources, made more sane by our developers and maintainers. Follow the instructions, and keep up. Users who do their own thing rather than keeping to some standard, supported layout/profile or don't update for long periods of time shouldn't blame portage for their problems. Portage and the overall quality of Gentoo packages have become amazing since I started this journey.
Major changes that might cause users problems are announced in the news. Read the news and abide by the guidance. Read the forums and help others when you can. Automate and test your backups. What's not to like?
Added: I maintain/update two local systems daily, because I can and takes about five minutes each with my morning coffee. Updating daily makes the larger updates much easier. Some days there are none, one or two, or sometimes 50 usually related packages. I don't watch the terminal window compile packages, but I do check for error log messages afterwards. What I learn maintaining these two daily, I am able to apply to those PCs that get updates less often. There are some long threads in the forms about a recent, major Python change (not 3.9) that helped many users (me included) get over that hump. Not everybody had trouble. Some people followed instructions better than I did. But in the forums I got the help I needed. I always get the help I need, and sometimes I do need help because, in the end, I'm just an overexposed and somewhat experienced ordinary user.
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Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi |
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ian.au
l33t
Joined: 07 Apr 2011
Posts: 600
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 5:14 am Post subject: |
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Gentoo's not for everyone, and never was. If you have no interest in learning how to design and administer a customised system, the power and flexibility it offers is inaccessible and consequently irrelevant, I guess.
It's not that hard to keep a stable system, even with a considered mix of ~, cooking along for years with minimal administrative intervention in my experience.
It takes a bit of commitment to reading the manuals / handbook, but when you need to configure a system for any purpose, Gentoo still makes it all easily available and accessible, and if the curve gets too steep, the resources here can always provide a push in the right direction if not an outright solution.
I'm amazed at the number of people who are convinced they need Gentoo, but not enough to learn the basics of administering their system.
It isn't that hard. |
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Spanik
l33t
Joined: 12 Dec 2003
Posts: 964
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:52 am Post subject: |
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I'm sorry if my experience is different from yours. But I can only speak of personal experience. I don't think my system is "unusual" in the sense of hardware or software. Supermicro Epyc board and a rather old Nvidia (works well with nouveau) . Only less common things are an Areca raid controller and an RME audio card. But both very well supported in the kernel and never a cause of problems. Using the bog standard Gentoo release as in the handbook, desktop just as plain Plasma with the profiles that match. Don't have a single masked or unmasked package. About 10 use files, mostly fileformat related (ogg, vorbis, text, flac, mp3). Only thing that is different from the handbook is keyboard layout.
So I guess that we have to agree to disagree.
I do agree however that the handbook and the forum are the greatest part of Gentoo. If it wasn't for those I would never had been able to get a Linux box running all those years ago.
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tld
Veteran
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
Posts: 1824
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| figueroa wrote: | | Reluctantly quoting the entire thread for context. @Spanik, this just isn't true, and your rant is poisoning the well for newer users. I've been maintaining what was originally an x86 desktop, now server, since 2004, often with monthly or less frequent updates, with limited but always solvable problems. |
I have to agree 100%, and yes...new users need to ignore this. I usually update my main workstation (a new AMD based machine) first and then sync my two MythTV systems from it. I tend to update roughly once a month (which is very infrequent for sure), which can occasionally cause some anomalies, but as you say, generally easily solvable.
Those MythTV systems are old x86 machines I've been using since 2007 (and they're actually a good bit older than that). Yesterday is a good example. I updated the MythTV systems after about a month, which included the perl upgrade to 5.32.1, and the switch to python 3.9. That's a lot. I ran into one update that failed because it required a perl module that hadn't yet recompiled after the perl update, but re-emerging that module got everything going again.
I think that for those who have a lot of issues, the most common culprit (especially with blocks etc) is unnecessary stuff in your world file (for example recompiling some dependency without --oneshot), and to a lesser extent, failing to do a --depclean after updates.
Tom |
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ian.au
l33t
Joined: 07 Apr 2011
Posts: 600
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Spanik wrote: | | I'm sorry if my experience is different from yours. But I can only speak of personal experience. |
No need to apologise to me, but you should try and find out what you're doing wrong with your installations.
I just read through a few of your recent posts; constant reinstallations (last on a 3mth old install for a basic python update?); running root everywhere because of poorly configured jack implementation etc..
If that was a typical Gentoo experience, nobody would use it.
Your problems with Gentoo are firmly rooted between the screen and the chair, whether you choose to recognise it or not. |
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dmpogo
Advocate
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Posts: 3271
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2021 4:56 am Post subject: |
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| Spanik wrote: | | Jaglover wrote: | | Spanik wrote: | | Just saw it after it's resurrection. I must say I agree with the OP. I feel even weekly updates might not be enough to keep up. A single minor fart in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or any of the others and the house of cards crashes. |
House of cards? Your Gentoo is a house of cards? I'm glad my Gentoo is not like that, all my installations are strong as rock. Nowadays I practically never use my laptop, I boot it once in 1-2 months for updating, running ~amd64, no problems with updates. |
It is stable once up and running, I give you that. But after any changes, however minor in Python, Perl, glibc, qt or other lib, portage and the updates grind to a halt with loads of slot conflict, circular dependencies and blockers. It normally takes me longer to deal with that then to reinstall. Alltough the last install took me also over a week to get -with the hulp of the forum- to a working system. The desktop is now up for a new install. The shit portage trows up is larger than the buffer of the terminal. |
Twemty years without ever reinstalling Gentoo - only one install per machine when a machine is bought new. Home installation - runs from 2007, soon 14 years, office desktop from 2011 - reaches 10 in two months. What are you doing with your Gentoo ?? |
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theBlackDragon
l33t
Joined: 23 Nov 2002
Posts: 768
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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Python's been a major pain in the neck since the changes they made to it. As long as that's the only thing you have to deal with it's annoying, but manageable. But good luck if you run into multiple issues at once, like an EAPI change combined with a Python target update. You're going to spend time to figure out what the hell it is this time.
Upgrading every 6 months seems to no longer be viable, and even more regular upgrades often run into annoying dependency conflicts that portage isn't able to figure out on its own.
It's not really an issue for systems that are actively used and thus regularly updated (like...weekly or so), but for systems updated every 3, or 6 months (just forget about upgrading less often than that entirely), Gentoo has become a major pain in the neck to maintain.
"Just update more regularly" isn't always an option, some of these are oddball architectures (which admittedly adds another layer of potential issues) and most of these are slow and/or power hungry.
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pjp
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20140
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| Posted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| theBlackDragon wrote: | | "Just update more regularly" isn't always an option, some of these are oddball architectures (which admittedly adds another layer of potential issues) and most of these are slow and/or power hungry. |
One possible mitigating method might be to keep weekly snapshots of the ::gentoo repo. Then when the 6 month update time comes, try using the current repo. If that has too many issues, go back to one of the older images. Something additional that might be helpful is to check what the update would do once per month. Then you can refer that monthly update report to gauge where you might begin the update process.
For those who aren't running "complicated" setups and find the update process "challenging," you're not alone. Because a few or even most others aren't having those problems doesn't mean the problems are necessarily your fault for doing something "wrong" (though it might be good to verify your process to make sure that is the case).
I have run stable with default compiler settings for almost my entire time with Gentoo. I only rarely use a ~ package, and I've never perceived a problem associated with those few packages. For at least the last 6 years, I've noticed an increasing difficulty or level of effort required to maintain my systems.
I think the following seem to be contributing factors to my experience:
- The nature of a rolling release. In the past, I perceive there to have been less or slower roll. More recently, development (not Gentoo specific) seems to take the approach of releasing more frequently. By extension, Gentoo would presumably try to keep up with those changes.
- Part of the more frequent releases seems to include shorter time between "major" changes. These changes aren't limited to upstream packages.
- Some examples. Upstream: X (I recall several notable changes), SSH, PAM, (...). Gentoo: 17.0 -> 17.1, user management (acct-{group,user}), syncing with git, verified syncs, libressl (hello, goodbye), and it seems like I'm forgetting at least one item. Gentoo also has to address upstream changes, so those may sometimes feel more Gentoo related than something upstream.
- For any change I consider significant (or merely that it could be), I prefer to have an understanding of what to expect in case something breaks and I need to fix it.
What I can't separate from the above list, and this a big factor, is time:
- How much time is this taking now compared to when I perceived maintaining Gentoo to be easier (6+ years ago). I've never tracked that, so this is unknowable.
- I do know that I am more frequently putting non-trivial effort into evaluating the impact of changes. I suspect this is the primary issue, and the items previously mentioned are part of the why.
- As a result, I'm more inclined to delay updates. I've tried both dealing with them as they come and delaying them until a "more convenient time," and for me, there doesn't seem to be an appreciable benefit to either. The only approach I've settled on is waiting to update my laptop until the next Firefox security issue, although the benefit is minimal.
- Finally, and this is 50% (random number) or more of my issue... I want to spend my free time doing something other than maintaining operating systems.
That's not an exhaustive list as I've never tried to record it until now, but most of my "issues" probably fall into one of those areas.
My long term goal as I hope to avoid using a pre-made binary distro is to convert all of my systems to generic amd64 binaries with a similarly generic kernel that supports my systems and KVM/Qemu. The only split will hopefully be "server" and "desktop." I've sort of been doing that for my laptop. Next is to do it with 2 "servers" and figure out how to present that appropriately to clients, and hopefully automate it to a degree.
These are just casual observations and not something I've tried to quantify, but I have tried to understand what changed in my perception of of maintaining my systems.
Your experience may be different, and that's OK too.
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Roman_Gruber
Advocate
Joined: 03 Oct 2006
Posts: 3846
Location: Austro Bavaria
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:50 am Post subject: |
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I only update every once a month by now.
Some packages have many blockers and depend on itself package versions. So my best practise is to get rid of everything in that regard, example:
| Code: | | emerge --unmerge $(qlist -Iv qt) |
You can than ask portage to install all new stuff again.
Pull in updates for the browser and kernel + nvidia-binary-gpu-driver as you want to. It helps when you stay on the same kernel branch, e.g. 4.19.xx
Updating gentoo is less a hassle compared updating my windows 10 home. |
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figueroa
Advocate
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 2978
Location: Edge of marsh USA
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Roman_Gruber wrote: | I only update every once a month by now.
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The least possible grief is experienced by updating daily with your morning coffee routine, or whatever routine rocks your boat. Doing this in small bites seldom takes any more than a passing thought, and one or two minutes of actual "work." Since Gentoo follows upstream, and upstream have become busy little beavers, it's far better to keep up with them.
Servers, of course, don't take nearly as much attention or benefit as much from frequency as desktop computers. My servers get attended to every few weeks, mainly determined by having gone to school on my primary desktop. My poor little and old Gateway ec1803 notebook is attended to more or less monthly with some attendant grief and the update typically runs for about 24 hours, bless its little heart.
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Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi |
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ian.au
l33t
Joined: 07 Apr 2011
Posts: 600
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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On desktops weekly updates are the sweet-spot in my experience but fortnightly is no problem when other work interferes. I'll generally pick a day over the weekend or when I don't need my desktop for other work to do my personal machine.
Before I do any machine in production I update the older machine sitting on the router and serving my local portage tree, read the news, make any adjustments required to the ../package.* files and run a -pv update in a screen session. Any real issues that need to be addressed arise there first. 99.9% of the time that completes fine and I deploy the update across to other machines the next evening.
If there's lots of issues, sometimes it's just easier to postpone the update a few days and resync and ask emerge to try again before digging in.
Out of habit I also always scan the portage and programming threads here on f.g.o. to identify possible issues before I run the update. |
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