Re: [gentoo-user] Knock on wood

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

bn wrote:
> Philip Webb ha scritto:
>   
>> 090812 Alan E. Davis wrote:
>>     
>>> I'm a little reluctant to say this, but it's been a couple of months now
>>> since I switched back to Gentoo, and I want to shout out my pleasure
>>> that this system has been performing admirably well this time around,
>>> in comparison with earlier installations.  None of the earlier installations
>>> were unacceptable, in fact, Gentoo remained my favorite.  I moved to Ubuntu
>>> because maintainance of the Gentoo boxes was much more time consuming.
>>>       
>> Yes, that seems to be the usual reason users leave Gentoo:
>> like owning a dog, you have to find time to maintain/exercise it.
>>     
>
> I am starting to be in trouble using Gentoo for this very reason. Once I
> used it on my desktop system, which was OK to be "under repair" once in
> a while, since I had my workstation at work. Now I moved abroad and I
> only have my laptop to use for all -home and work. If it is hosed, I am
> lost (I have the OS X partition but it is basically useless for my job).
>
> So I am becoming very reluctant in updating critical components -one
> example is my kernel, which is basically untouched since I installed, in
> late 2007. I know it's counterproductive, because the more I wait, the
> worse it is, but it's always a matter of time, and I don't have that
> time -not to update per se, which I have, but to face problems in case
> critical updates don't go smooth.
>
> Any advice on this kind of situation? I would rather not buy a "backup
> laptop".
>
>   
>> However, unlike a dog, you can catch up after a long absence:
>>     
>
> Heh, I hope so!
>
> m.
>
>
>   

I do it this way.  I keep at least two working kernels in /boot.  If I
need to, I can edit the grub boot line to boot the old kernel if the new
one doesn't work.  I do NOT use the make install thing.  I do mine
manually and name them in my own little way to know what kernel version
it is and what version it is locally.  It is usually something like
bzImage-<kernel version>-<local version>.  For local version a simple -1
or -2 works fine.  I also copy the .config over with the same name.

When I upgrade and get a known good kernel where everything works well,
I then do some house cleaning with regard to the older kernels.  As
mentioned earlier, I keep at least two working kernels, the one I am
using and a backup.  Looks something like this:

root@smoker / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.2*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2460088 Jan  2  2009 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2463768 Apr 16 17:10 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2370876 May 27 11:01 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-4
root@smoker / #

The config files look similar as well. 

As far as packages, just use the buildpkg in make.conf and then you have
a binary backup that can be restored in just a few minutes for even a
large package. 

Backups are also nice.  Just in case.

Dale

:-)  :-)