Was wondering if it'd be possible to have the Gentoo image updated on a more regular basis?

Currently, the image is still the same as when it was first posted (many months ago) and an emerge -u system takes a very long time to compile.

Since Gentoo is a compile-from-source distro, this would be very beneficial (and time-saving) for many users when they install Gentoo (not to mention for other users on the same host, with the imperfect I/O scheduling of the 2.4 kernel).

Ideally, the image could be updated weekly (and maybe named "Gentoo dd-mm-yyyy", so installers would know that it is being updated... or just "Gentoo" would work I guess -- but "1.4" isn't much of a designation, as there is no real number release of Gentoo, they are all just snapshots.) -- or whenever you get a chance!

I'm not sure how much effort it takes on your part Chris to update these images , but for people who are trying Gentoo (or those who reinstall often on a testing server), this would be a life-saver.

thanks,
j

_________________
Programs that crash have been proven to be less useful than those that don't.
• Apple TechNote 117 •

I actually have a Gentoo image updated and ready to be deployed. You had emailed me about a week ago, and I was about to reply with a "matter of a fact, I have one ready" email, but then there was an emergency which took my attention away from getting it distributed...

I'll give the distro one last look-over and try to get it to all the hosts tonight.

Others have suggested a job that runs every week or so, which keeps Gentoo up to date (and other distros, as well). I haven't looked into this yet, but I think it's a good idea.

Thanks,
-Chris

Cool, thanks Chris!

Sorry to post here after emailing you, but I figured that you either weren't getting my emails or something came up.

Yeah, I fully recommend having it updated often, and if you can set up an automatic script, all the better (less work for you)

I'm not sure how your setup works, but a simple cron job to run

-emerge sync
-emerge -upv system
-emerge -upv world
-have it email you the results of these, so you can check it before it runs the rest and does something potentially bad...
-emerge -uv system
-emerge -uv world
-etc-update (this part may require manual work on your part, or you could leave this for people to do when they deploy?)

definitely have portage logging setup, so you can keep track of what's going on. (oh, and I personally run emerge -u system and world separately, because things get updated in a different order this way)

actually, since I think having manual checks-and-balances is necessary, maybe cron isn't a good idea?

Is there anything else you have to do to update the images other than what I listed above?

-j

_________________
Programs that crash have been proven to be less useful than those that don't.

• Apple TechNote 117 •

Updated Gentoo Linux 1.4 Filesystem

-Chris

Chris,
did you update the distro image yet? I would guess so, because now it is listed as taking up 900MB of space, while previously (IIRC) it was around 750.

Did you add any packages to the distro? If so what?

thanks!
j


EDIT: Never mind, posted at the same time you did!

_________________
Programs that crash have been proven to be less useful than those that don't.

• Apple TechNote 117 •

All of the Linode-specific setup has already been done. So deploying a distro to update it requires me to clean it afterwords. For example: reset SSH keys (so they gen on boot), remove root's history file, reset the logs, clear out /tmp and some of /var/*... That kind of stuff...

-Chris