Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo as a Production Server

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo as a Production Server

[Maciek Borowka]

Heh... Reply to... :+)



----- Forwarded message from Maciek Borowka <maciek@borowka.net> -----
 Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo as a Production Server
      To: Vano Dolukhanian <vano@europeansoftware.com>

Hello,

This subject was already discussed several times on both gentoo-dev and
gentoo-users. A lot of ideas were proposed and discussed. Just search the
archives for "Stable gentoo", "gentoo server" and so on...
As far as I remember (and this is what I would advice too) the most important
thing using a gentoo server is to *never* emerge --update --world... This (very
powerful, indeed) tool is simply not made for a server environement.

Anyway, why would you want to update world? If you have a server without any
security holes (ok, without any evident security holes ;+) you don't need to
update... If you take a look, there is still a pretty good quantity of Redhat6.2
servers on the internet - they work and no one is really ready to upgrade them...

Just my 0.02 euro...
/Maciek


Quoting Vano Dolukhanian <vano@europeansoftware.com>:

> Hi all,
>
> 	I am using Gentoo as a samba, mail and intranet web server at a site.
> It is what usually is termed a "production server". Lately several
> incidents have occured to me while upgrading (OpenSSH and a few other
> stuff like Apache) using emerge -up system/world.
>
> [snip]
>
> 	All in all, I love Gentoo and am moving everything in my hands to this
> distro, but I would love to regain my trust in emerge -up when dealing
> with sensitive enviornments.






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[gentoo-dev] Gentoo as a Production Server

[Vano Dolukhanian]

Hi all,

	I am using Gentoo as a samba, mail and intranet web server at a site.
It is what usually is termed a "production server". Lately several
incidents have occured to me while upgrading (OpenSSH and a few other
stuff like Apache) using emerge -up system/world. 

	I always take a lot of care while upgrading to make sure no backward
compatibility issues arise because of the new software. But after being
locked out of ssh after updating OpenSSH (because the latest version
requires a /var/empty dir which the ebuild does NOT create and the
service will NOT restart) and after seeing named (bind) fail to start
after a restart of service (to check whether everything is ok) and
finding that it seems it is missing some files (remerging it fixed it,
but after a few hours where users were not being able to use the net nor
emails), I have come to distrust emerge -up completely regarding a
server environment. Most of these issues (there are more smaller ones)
have occured to me in the past week. 

	I am using Gentoo at home on several computers and this was my first
attempt at using it at a site and unfortunately I am doubting if I have
done a good decision. 

	I am sending this email to ask fellow admins what guidelines (if any)
do they adopt when using Gentoo on such an environment and to find out
what other people's suggestions are. Also are there any plans to make
Gentoo more solid and stable in a server enviornment? Having a
server/secure/stable profile for example?

	All in all, I love Gentoo and am moving everything in my hands to this
distro, but I would love to regain my trust in emerge -up when dealing
with sensitive enviornments.

	Regards,

	Vano D.