[SlugLUG] Debian As A Server

[cerise at armory.com]

On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 03:08:16PM -0700, Erich Blume wrote:
> It's terribly bad form to leave out -av on ANY emerge.
>
> So make that "emerge -uDav world". This will spit out a verbose and (if
> you're in an ANSI-color terminal) color-coded list of every package that is
> going to get emerged. That's -v, of course, and then -a prompts you if you'd
> like to begin the emerge.

   My scripts don't screw up and I know what I mean when I type it.  So I don't
bother with "-a".  "-v" can be kinda nice, but I gave up on it.  The only
useful thing it did for me was show me which USE flags went with which package.
   I say that only partially tongue in cheek.  I don't have time to fuss around
with a system that wants me to be sure about what I told it to do.  So far,
it's worked for me.
   If I'm emerging something for the first time, I'll usually use appear's
---use feature which prompts you for use flags.  Anything else uses the ones in
/var/db/pkg/$CAT/$PKG/USE by default.
 
> Also, after doing a -uD world, it's a good idea to run revdep-rebuild to
> make sure the Deep dependency search didn't leave any packages stranded.
> Updating GCC in particular tends to break things.
> 
> Failing that, though (like if your update is scripted), a log is kept in
> "/var/log/emerge.log". It'll take some parsing, but it does keep track of
> everything, even if you run multiple concurrent emerges (which makes parsing
> the file really, really annoying - trust me, I've tried.)

   re:multiple concurrent emerges, that's one of the reasons appear exists.
It's very annoying when you have two packages compiling which have a number of 
dependencies in common and march along redundant paths like lemmings.
   The logs are nicely serialized and if you ever want to see the whole emerge,
you just bzcat /var/log/appear/$cat-$pkg-$stage.  8)
 
> On a side note: I've had Gentoo "break" on me twice now. That's when the
> dependency tree just get so borked and binaries are breaking everywhere that
> I just scrap the whole thing, back up my data, and re-install from scratch.
> Both of those two times were direct results of an "emerge -uDav world". I
> generally "emerge -uav world" every night following my nightly "emerge
> --sync", and do a "emerge -uDav world" only when the mood fits me, usually
> once a month at most. I figure that -D won't catch anything I can't catch
> myself by having a program break down on me or have a package fail to
> compile.

   I've broken gentoo, but I've never given up on it.  I normally boot and
fix things from the live CD.  That's happened 2x.  It is rather annoying
when it happens, though I think every time it's been the result of a fouled
attempt at updating glibc.
   Now I keep busybox and old packages around.
   Neither of those times was caused by a -D though.  What did -D find and
break in your case?

-Phil/CERisE