Re: [gentoo-user] Re: how to recover a portage that wasn't in use for very long time

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 13 May 2009, at 11:17, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> ...
> Why are you doing this? Is it to learn how to cope with such things?
>
> If not, you are really wasting time that you will never get back. ...
>
> Trust me, if this is not a learning exercise, just unmount your data  
> volumes
> and reinstall the machine. The pain is not worth it. Really. ...

I'm inclined to disagree with you here. Obviously, it depends on the  
user - as I've undertaken this, I knew not to bother asking here  
because I knew I'd receive exactly this response. I examined ebuilds  
to see the blockers & looked up compatible versions in the portage  
attic, and I did my own searches when I came to problems like this  
one. And so far I've been ok.

In my case, reinstallation would be a huge pain. I would be massively  
worrying about which services on the machine I need to configure  
again, and whether everything I needed had been backed up properly. I  
have forgotten the original procedures I followed setting up many of  
these services, and it could easily take a week to set the machine up  
from scratch.

If I upgrade the "obsolete portage" incrementally, I know that  
everything is still working, and I update the machine without  
disruption to the users who depend upon the machine. If a service  
fails during the procedure, then it is only ONE service that I have to  
fix, not several. As I upgrade a package & run etc-update I can back  
up the original config files, and if I find the new ones are vastly  
different then I can refer to the originals &/or diff them in.

If this upgrade procedure is undertaken cautiously, then it is no  
worse or different than it was when the changes originally entered the  
portage tree. One can `emerge -pv world` and then emerge the first  
package with --oneshot, rinse & repeat. Sure, this is potentially time- 
consuming, but I can leave packages compiling whilst I'm doing other  
things - reinstalling from scratch a base Gentoo installation isn't  
too bad (hardware, logger, housekeeping), but once you add in a number  
of services then I'm going to need to dedicate some time to the job.

I'm not reading Alexey too clearly, but it seems to me that he is  
saying he has a full system backup. In this case one can restore to  
that in minutes if something goes hosed badly during an emerge or if  
the users come in the next morning & complain that $facility isn't  
working.

I'm NOT saying that this procedure is for everyone, but equally I  
don't think it's fair to say there's NEVER any justification for it.

Stroller.