Re: [gentoo-user] Mothballing a ~arch gentoo system?

[William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

On Sun, 2009-12-27 at 20:45 -0600, Dale wrote:
> Marcus Wanner wrote:
> > When an old (circa 2001) desktop came out of retirement a few months 
> > ago, I shuffled across Linuxes trying to find something that worked 
> > well, and finally hit on gentoo. I eventually switched to ~x86 because 
> > I was tired of using versions of apps from 6 months ago... Too make a 
> > long story short, I have a new computer now and that one is going back 
> > into retirement. I may want to use it more in future and would like to 
> > know how I would go about "mothballing" it so that if it ever needs to 
> > be used again, bringing it up to date will be as smooth and painless 
> > as possible. If I need to resurrect it, it will probably be at least a 
> > year from now. What would you recommend?
> >
> > Marcus
> >
> >
> 
> Portage is better but that is a while to go without a update.  It mostly 
> depends on what all is updated with some sort of hiccup between the time 
> you shut it down and the time you try to update it again.  If there is 
> no major problems then it wouldn't be a issue but of there is multiple 
> packages with issues, then you have a problem.
> 
> Me, I would put it in a closet or something with a ethernet cable hooked 
> up and just update it say once every 6 to 8 weeks.  Just hope for the 
> best after that.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

I have an "emergency desktop" system at work that I recently pulled out
of storage to use (laptop HD died!).  Once used, I spent quite a while
updating it and was just going to put it aside using Dales suggestion
when this thread got me thinking.

I am going to clean out gnome and anything not of immediate use leaving
just a bare desktop and minimal tools needed for emergency use (OO,
evolution) - I'll replace gnome with fluxbox first.

Then if it needs to get serious use other packages can be added on the
fly.  If it looks like longer term use, its easy to add gnome etc back
overnight, and while continuing to use the fluxbox desktop.

The minimal system should be quicker and simpler to update than a crufty
system - and if you have to update much of gnome and the like,
updating/reinstalling might take longer than building from scratch
anyway (going by my last update to gnome :)

BillK