Gene Poole wrote:

> I've been a Slackware user for years but I've recently made the switch
> to Gentoo on a few boxes to see how it suits my needs. I've got my
> system set up the way I like it with X11, gdm, fluxbox, and all the GUI
> apps my wife needs (firefox, skype, etc). My question now is how to
> keep it all up-to-date. Emerge and portage sound simple enough in
> concept, but it seems like every time I dig into the docs, I discover
> another command or option that I was unaware of. I'd like to script out
> the update process as much as possible, but I'm not sure if I've got all
> my bases covered. Here's what I do now:
>
> emerge --sync
> emerge -Du world
> etc-update [follow the prompts]
>
> I'm sure I'm missing some important steps.

I'd make a habit of running revdep-rebuild every once in a while, to make
sure the dependencies are up-to-date...

As for scripting it... well... you can run "emerge --sync" as a chron job,
but that would be the end of automating the update process. You don't want
to automate the "emerge -u world"... incase it wants to drag in anything
you don't want and automating "etc-update" is just totally WRONG. You would
very easily overwrite your hard earned config files in /etc if you weren't
careful...

Cheers.




--

Jerry McBride (jmcbride@mail-on.us)