On 2/26/07, Lionel B. [email protected] wrote:
[snip]
Thank you so much for writing this: I’ve been looking for exactly
something
like this. I figured that there was an easy way to use Gentoo once you
became an experienced admin, and I am definitely not… this was exactly
the
information that I needed.
Note: I am not the OP… just wanted to thank Lionel.
Peter De Berdt wrote the following on 26.02.2007 15:37 :
The main concern the people I talked with concerning Gentoo is related
to the Gentoo philosophy of updating as much as possible.
?! Why is it that I have several production servers on which I only
applied security updates for anywhere between 8 and 18 months?
What you call “Gentoo philosophy” is probably “a subset of Gentoo’s
users philosophy”. Some seem to think that only because they can update
they must.
In fact, Gentoo doesn’t have stable releases, as everything is
centered around fast, incremental updates. Gentoo encourages you to
update as much as possible (it’s all over their documentation)
Where exactly? I’m not reading Gentoo manuals each evening, but for 2
years I seem to have missed these encouragements…
and when updating the system, a profile update will try to replace
your system. A profile update will mess around with your configuration
files and even alter them, which means a reboot can lead to your
server just being offline for hours because the update has broken your
setup.
1/ a profile update is not automatic, you have to choose to update your
profile (you can only be reminded that your profile is going to become
obsolete). From past experience, a profile is supported for at least one
year and a new one appears each 6 months.
2/ configuration files are next to never updated without the admin’s
intervention which is helped in doing so by merging utilities like
dispatch-conf. For baselayout config files, old config formats are
usually supported by new versions of init scripts in order to avoid
problems with early reboots.
If you add to that the time it usually takes to get your Gentoo server
completely set up the way you want it and you’ll have to go through
all these time-consuming steps over and over again,
Usually you only do it once and make a so-called stage4 image with your
own basesytem utilities and custom configuration. Then installing a
Gentoo is probably quicker than any other distribution (one tar xf… is
usually far more efficient than multiple packages installation).
Granted, it takes time and probably half a dozen installs to get more
efficient than a Debian/Ubuntu admin (unless she uses the same tar
method which is in no way out of the reach of a competent Linux admin).
If you use production systems you should have a staging farm on which to
build your stage4 when you want it to have updated packages and test
updates before applying them to production systems (which . The only
time spent is the one the computer spends compiling, the amount of time
of the admin is roughly the same (and given that you don’t have to hunt
in various repositories for the soft you need or package it yourself, it
usually is less than the time spent on other distributions).
it’s just not a very effective system for servers, but it’s a great
system for people who like to play around with just about everything
there is in Linux.
It’s great for both, you just don’t use it in the same way if you are a
sysadmin of a big farm or use your own computer.
My Ubuntu experience has been: install it, configure it in a few hours
and then just install the security updates as they come along. And if
I update, I do it with peace of mind that everything will keep on
running as smooth as a baby’s bottom
My Ubuntu experience has been: install it, configure it in a few
minutes, then upgrade to the next major release, see it break badly
(meaning missing core libraries) and spend an afternoon fetching the
pieces.
I had the bad luck of installing Ubuntu 5 just before the Ubuntu 6
release and so I was still a newbie in respect of Ubuntu’s (Debian’s in
fact) apt / aptitude and such package management utilities. I don’t
resent Ubuntu for that, just my lack of knowledge of the utilities. I
probably went outside the safe path without knowing it.
Don’t mistake lack of expertise of the admin with the distribution
defaults. Gentoo probably asks for more investments than other
distributions but usually big investments like these are a good sign for
productivity on the long term.
Lionel.
I like thegridlayer.com
Very scalable and redundant.
On 2/26/07, Luke I. [email protected] wrote:
–
EPA Rating: 3000 Lines of Code / Gallon (of coffee)
On Feb 26, 2007, at 6:37 AM, Peter De Berdt wrote:
centered around fast, incremental updates. Gentoo encourages you to
everything there is in Linux.
I have to disagree here 
I’m currently running over 150 production
Rails servers on Gentoo and could not be more happy with our choice
of distro. It definitely takes more work to get setup right. But once
it is setup right no other distro can touch it for flexibility and
tunability.
Cheers-
– Ezra Z.
– Lead Rails Evangelist
– [email protected]
– Engine Y., Serious Rails Hosting
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
On 26 Feb 2007, at 20:50, Ezra Z. wrote:
I have to disagree here
Rails servers on Gentoo and could not be more happy with our choice
of distro. It definitely takes more work to get setup right. But once
it is setup right no other distro can touch it for flexibility and
tunability.
OK, I take back my words, after all, it was just what I was
recommended by friends who did run on Gentoo servers. I like to call
myself fairly knowledgable when it comes to Linux, but not an expert,
maybe that’s also the reason they recommended me to stick with
Ubuntu. That said, I’m really happy with ubuntu as a production server.
Best regards
Peter De Berdt
On Feb 26, 2007, at 6:03 AM, Peter De Berdt wrote:
environments, but I don’t like the way the OS is going forward, and
if you google around, I’m not the only one).
I couldn’t disagree with this more strongly, though I think I
understand the spirit of the comment.
I think I would say: Don’t use Gentoo for production unless you
really know what you’re doing, in which case, don’t use anything
else. 
–
– Tom M., CTO
– Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting
– Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
On Feb 26, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Jordan E. wrote:
I have to disagree here
Rails servers on Gentoo and could not be more happy with our choice
of distro. It definitely takes more work to get setup right. But once
it is setup right no other distro can touch it for flexibility and
tunability.Do you find all the compiling an issue? I’ve heard quite a few people
express that as a problem (coming from a desktop gentoo user).
Since I work with Ezra, I’ll answer this one.
Setting up a new system takes a lot of time, but then you can maintain
your own binary distribution from that point forward.
When we install new packages at Engine Y., there’s rarely any
compiling
involved, only for new versions, and once it’s compiled once, it’s not
compiled again.
And each and every thing we build is 100% optimized for our environment,
just the way we want it.
–
– Tom M., CTO
– Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting
– Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
On Feb 26, 2007, at 3:15 PM, mix wrote:
i’m thinking about gentoo but i don’t know if it’s simple to manage,
maybe with a lot of servers
This question is very general so I’ll probably not answer it entirely.
We utilize a SAN, so I cannot speak to hard drive failures in a more
typical configuration.
Suffice it to say, however, that I don’t believe that Gentoo is lacking
anything in the way of management, with exception, of course, to the
commercial offerings that may be included in commercial distributions.
–
– Tom M., CTO
– Engine Y., Ruby on Rails Hosting
– Reliability, Ease of Use, Scalability
– (866) 518-YARD (9273)
I have to disagree here
Rails servers on Gentoo and could not be more happy with our choice
of distro. It definitely takes more work to get setup right. But once
it is setup right no other distro can touch it for flexibility and
tunability.
Do you find all the compiling an issue? I’ve heard quite a few people
express that as a problem (coming from a desktop gentoo user).
Tom M. wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Jordan E. wrote:
When we install new packages at Engine Y., there’s rarely any
compiling
involved, only for new versions, and once it’s compiled once, it’s not
compiled again.
may i ask you what do you use to manage a lot of servers in the same
moment ? for example updates (cron?), hard disk failure, and other
things…
i’m thinking about gentoo but i don’t know if it’s simple to manage,
maybe with a lot of servers
Tom M. wrote:
On Feb 26, 2007, at 3:15 PM, mix wrote:
i’m thinking about gentoo but i don’t know if it’s simple to manage,
maybe with a lot of serversThis question is very general so I’ll probably not answer it entirely.
We utilize a SAN, so I cannot speak to hard drive failures in a more
typical configuration.Suffice it to say, however, that I don’t believe that Gentoo is lacking
anything in the way of management, with exception, of course, to the
commercial offerings that may be included in commercial distributions.
ok, thanks
maybe can you just write which packages do you use? if you can and
want…
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