Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Managing updates on many identical Gentoo systems

["Anthony G. Basile" <blueness@gentoo.org>]

On 1/19/18 10:03 AM, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
> On 1/19/18 9:45 AM, Alec Warner wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 5:13 PM, Bill Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>>
>>> On 18/01/18 23:36, Duncan wrote:
>>>> Anthony G. Basile posted on Thu, 18 Jan 2018 06:46:53 -0500 as excerpted:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm trying to design an update system for many identical Gentoo systems.
>>>>>  Using a binhost is obvious, but there are still problems with this
>>>>> approach.
>>>>>
>>>
>>> I'd suggest go for a semi diskless OS - boot them from one central image
>>> with an individual overlay filesystem with local customisations.  NFS
>>> mount the common directories.
>>>
>>> you just have a one central host to build for and don't need to worry
>>> about portage everywhere.
>>>
>>> Worked ok with a small number of mythtv frontends.
>>>
>>
>> It doesn't work if you have a WAN; NFS needs low latencies between the NFS
>> server and the client or you will have a bad time.
>>
>>
> 
> Zac pretty much nailed the requirements in bug #644990.  You should not
> need the portage tree at all, neither locally nor via any network
> filesystem.  He mentions there that it is currently possible via "a
> dummy profile", but I'm not sure what he means by that yet or how to set
> one up.  I'll read his bug #640318 and try to figure it out.
> 
> Thanks guys, I'm glad people at least recognized the usefulness of such
> a possibility.
> 

Okay, I have a workable solution to my question.  I was able to get
binhost working with a portage tree containing ONLY /profiles and
/eclass.  That's 12MB and 2.8MB in size, respectively, and I can
probably dump a bunch of the unused profile directories slimming that
down.  With just those two directories in PORTDIR, emerge -K pulls down
the update packages from BINHOST and installs them.

@zac any comments about this approach?  Is it likely to break?

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@gentoo.org
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