Gentoo - so cool that versions don't matter! [LWN.net]

Gentoo - so cool that versions don't matter!

Posted Aug 16, 2003 9:02 UTC (Sat) by Klavs (subscriber, #10563)
In reply to: Gentoo - so cool that versions don't matter! by bkw1a
Parent article: Gentoo Linux 1.4 released

Gentoo will work just fine for a server environment, as long as you know what you are doing.

You can find the slides for a presentation of Gentoo I held at my local LUG (SSLUG) - here http://vsen.dk

The short tips, would be to make a buildhost - the WORST thing you can do, is to compile packages on every machine, cause then each server will be different and that's a BAD idea. Also remember that portage supports pre-compiled packages - so have a buildhost - and lock down the servers, so they CAN'T Compile packages - only install pre-compiled packages from your buildhost.

Unfortunately (AFAIK) Gentoo doesn't support fetching those packages automatically from some mirror (yet atleast - definetely a needed feature), but I'm sure you can get the packages out to the machine yourself - and then it's no problem.

Another clever thing you should do, is to run your own portage tree on your buildhost - and then let the servers "emerge sync" from that. That way you can ensure which package versions the servers see (cause they will always try for the latest) - and this way you can simply update your servers, by mounting your buildhost package dir (usr/portage/packages) and running emerge -u world.

Takes a little work to get running - but once it's running you will be set for life ;)

Also, you can many more great tips and help at forums.gentoo.org - it's really an active forum community, with help for everyone and everything.

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