From: Albert Hopkins <marduk@gentoo.org>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] how do you keep up with system administration?
Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 09:48:00 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1180450080.8155.52.camel@blackwidow.nbk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d9a0a6da0705290701gad7635fka08a7b9ae103572f@mail.gmail.com>
On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 10:01 -0400, Denis wrote:
> I'm curious to know your approach to keeping your Gentoo box current
> without it becoming a full-time job. I'm not talking about
> maintaining servers - just your "daily driver", so to say.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "daily server." Did you mean to
say "daily workstation"? "Daily server" sounds more like a butler or
something. My Gentoo setup is basically (daily) workstation which
doubles as a file server, a laptop, a MythTV station, and a Xen host
with various virtual machines.
>
> How often do you sync with the current portage tree and compare it
> your versions in "world"? Should one do this once a week? Once in
> two weeks?
This is really going to depend on the individual, being yourself. The
only thing I can recommend is that you don't wait *too* long to
sync/upgrade as it's usually a pain. Again, my setup:
Workstation: usually every day depending on my mood
Laptop: About once a month
MythBox: As needed (new release of Mythtv, etc)
Xen host: New version of Xen/Kernel
Xen guests: base image updated regularly, other guests as needed
> How often to you update major components, like Xorg, kernel, and
> system tool chain? As soon as new things become available, or, say,
> once a month or so?
Workstation: when available (except kernel. I sometimes use bleeding
edge (using kernels not yet in portage) until something breaks and then
I get conservative.
Laptop: Once a month, or whenever next major release of GNOME is out
MythTv: don't worry about it that much.
Xen host: ditto, except for kernel
Xen guests: depends on what it's doing. If it's a web server, for
example, I try to keep up to date on apache. some guests have newer
versions of some packages masked because I require a certain version.
Try to not stay too far behind on Xen/Kernel but their releases are
infrequent anyway.
>
> The reason I ask is because I often don't have a lot of time to devote
> to system administration on a regular basis but do want to keep my box
> updated as much as possible. How do some of you non-developers
> balance system administration with your "day job"?
For some people system administration is their day job. For others,
they save it at for evenings/weekends. :-). It really depends. Is this
for your system at home (I'm still confused about the "daily server"
part)? If it's for home then I'd imagine most people consider Gentoo
"administration" as a hobby and thus probably do it as often as any
other hobby. If you mean at work, well I've only had one job where
Gentoo was used in the office (and there it was pretty much only for
workstations and "light" servers but in general most places I've seen do
updates on an "as needed" basis (i.e. security updates, updates that fix
a particular issue you're experiencing, etc.). Of course a lot of the
big shops use "enterprise" solutions like Red Hat Network or Red
Carpet/Zenworks.
I don't think you're going to find a "hard" rule if that's what you're
looking for, but hopefully you'll get enough responses to be able to
come up with your own.
--
Albert W. Hopkins
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-05-29 14:55 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-05-29 14:01 [gentoo-user] how do you keep up with system administration? Denis
2007-05-29 14:29 ` Mark Shields
2007-05-29 14:32 ` Kevin O'Gorman
2007-05-29 14:40 ` Ryan Sims
2007-05-29 14:48 ` Albert Hopkins [this message]
2007-05-29 14:50 ` Daniel Iliev
2007-05-29 16:49 ` Roy Wright
2007-05-29 17:07 ` Ralf Stephan
2007-05-29 17:39 ` Florian Philipp
2007-05-29 19:07 ` Denis
2007-05-29 18:45 ` kashani
2007-05-30 0:16 ` Tim Allinghan
2007-05-30 1:19 ` Denis
2007-05-30 2:20 ` Ryan Sims
2007-05-30 2:53 ` Michael Sullivan
2007-05-30 3:05 ` Denis
2007-05-30 7:21 ` Neil Bothwick
2007-05-30 9:06 ` Eray Aslan
2007-05-30 3:20 ` Kevin O'Gorman
2007-05-30 10:03 ` Benno Schulenberg
2007-05-30 17:20 ` Denis
2007-05-30 20:57 ` Neil Bothwick
2007-05-30 3:49 ` Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
2007-05-30 4:37 ` Denis
2007-05-30 7:22 ` Neil Bothwick
2007-05-30 7:25 ` John covici
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