[gentoo-dev] Gentoo as a Production Server

[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. 

	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.