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I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
in one swell foop?

ray <ray@zianet.com> writes:

> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
> in one swell foop?

Null.


However, with some dedication and enough time, it's possible to bring
it up to date.


--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not
want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein

On 2007-01-08, ray <ray@zianet.com> wrote:

> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
> in one swell foop?

Very close to 0%.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Yes, Private
at DOBERMAN!!
visi.com

On 2007-01-08, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> ray <ray@zianet.com> writes:
>
>> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
>> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
>> in one swell foop?
>
> Null.

Actually, why is that? It seems that updating a Gentoo system without
any issues requires quite a bit of luck. Isn't it supposed to just work?

It's the one thing about Gentoo that really bugs me and has made me
consider trying alternatives. The only thing holding me back is that I
know Gentoo better than any other distribution, and I like the
flexibility.

I'm not saying that Gentoo is bad, just that with the current situation
it seems that I've slipped out of the target audience, and I wonder if
that's really necessary.

--
Jesper Cheetah <xyborx+usenet@xyborx.dk>

On 2007-01-08, Jesper Cheetah <xyborx+usenet@xyborx.dk> wrote:
> On 2007-01-08, Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
>> ray <ray@zianet.com> writes:
>>
>>> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
>>> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
>>> in one swell foop?
>>
>> Null.
>
> Actually, why is that?

There are a couple main reasons:

1) Errors or omissions in dependancies. Many apps require
certain versions of libraries. Sometimes that is captured
in the dependancy info, sometimes it isn't.

2) Packages being replace by or absorbed into other packages.
That doesn't seem to be handled or documented by the ebuild
system.

> It seems that updating a Gentoo system without any issues
> requires quite a bit of luck. Isn't it supposed to just work?

Sure, it's supposed to "just work" most of the time. But
Gentoo is software. Software has bugs.

> It's the one thing about Gentoo that really bugs me and has made me
> consider trying alternatives. The only thing holding me back is that I
> know Gentoo better than any other distribution, and I like the
> flexibility.

Updating Gentoo systems sucks. However, in my experience it
sucks a lot less than updating any other distro.

> I'm not saying that Gentoo is bad, just that with the current
> situation it seems that I've slipped out of the target
> audience, and I wonder if that's really necessary.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! .. Everything
at is....FLIPPING AROUND!!
visi.com

On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:15:38 -0700, ray wrote:

> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing that all
> in one swell foop?

Thanks for replies - I was afraid of that. I'll probably wait until I can
find time to rebuild on a new partition and then go from there.

ray wrote:

> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and
> a half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing
> that all in one swell foop?

I recently updated a box that had been basically neglected for almost a
year. There were quite a few issues to contend with. One of the more
important issues was the GCC upgrade, which of course pulls in all other
updates when you do the emerge -e world step. The switch to modular X
might have to be done first, as I remember some problems with getting
the correct order of compiles, and that's really not possible to correct
with using emerge --resume or emerge --resume --skipfirst. Other than
that, there will probably be some failed compiles due to changes in the
java version handling. Those just need to be skipped for the time being
and retried later.

All in all, I think it's being very optimistic to think that such a
neglected system can be upgraded without issues. That would require not
only perfect ebuilds, but also way more backwards compatibility than
Gentoo has any reason to implement.

Unless you're doing it to prove that it can be done, it'll probably be
faster to rebuild from scratch, with the config files you already have.
You'll have to compile the same amount of packages, but without as many
breakages.

--
PeKaJe

But maybe we don't really need that...
-- Larry Wall in <199709011851.LAA07101@wall.org>

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ray said the following on 08.01.2007 06:26:
| On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:15:38 -0700, ray wrote:
|
|> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and a
|> half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing
that all
|> in one swell foop?
|
| Thanks for replies - I was afraid of that. I'll probably wait until I can
| find time to rebuild on a new partition and then go from there.
|

Actually, that isn't necessary. Your question was, whether it would work
in "one swell foop". The answer to this question is: the chances are
almost zero.
That doesn't mean, that you don't have any chances to do this update at
all. Updating Gentoo is possible in almost all cases. But with such a
long time between the updates, you are likely to need a lot of time for it.
But maybe you're right. It may take less time to just build a fresh
system, because you'll have to compile almost every package anyway.

- --
*Sebastian Volke*
registered Linux user #426550

mail address: echo ozslxhmfw_gfxyn@lrc.sjy | perl -pe 'y/a-z/v-za-w/'
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ray <ray@zianet.com> wrote:
> I have one gentoo box which has not been updated for about a year and
> a half. What would you judge to be the chance of successfully doing
> that all in one swell foop?

1:100

If nothing else, the udev change will probably bite you, meaning some manual
configs and re-emerges.

Regards,
--
*Art