Re: [tlug] Looking for advice on the best way to rebuild a gentoo box

["Zev Blut" <zb@example.com>]

On Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:37:57 +0900, Al Hoang <hoanga@example.com> wrote:

> 	I'm not a Gentoo expert by any means although *cough* I presume
> there are some folks on TLUG who are.  But you might want to keep these
> factors in the quest to answer 'upgrade' or 'reinstall'
> 1. What (green/blue/brown)black belt level of Distro-fu are you at?
> 2. How much do you value your current system state as is?
> 3. How much do you want to get rid of old cruft?
> 4. How many new things that came down the pipeline look like they'll  
> stomp
>    on what you have now?
>
> If 2 is pretty big on your concern list and 1 is not a problem, it's
> probably more tempting to hit 'emerge world'.
> If 3 & 4 are concerns perhaps a reinstall with an overlay of what you  
> have
> for your current system will be more appropriate

[ Snip awesome formulas for estimating time consumed with the above
options ]

I am going to have to use your formulas to better weigh my choices ;-)

> 	If it was me, I'd catalog all the stuff I installed, backup /etc,
> /home, /usr/portage and anything in /usr/local/portage then reinstall
> from scratch since the number of system affecting changes in your case
> seem a large enough delta that it'd be better to try to install a
> new system and figure out which settings you had can be merged back in
> properly.  I'm sure other folks will have different opinions on this.
> Another reason being that, my experience is that many distros spend
> incredible amounts of effort making sure INSTALLS go very well however
> upgrades are a very hard problem to get right since upgrades usually
> tend to be on a customized configuration to the point each machine is
> a little bit unique so the possibility of hitting an unforeseen snag
> is high without huge amounts of integration testing or just installing
> very plain and boring packages.

This is probably the best idea and the one that in the long run will
take the least time.  But, maybe I will learn more by hosing my system
trying to do it the hard way ;-)

Thanks,
Zev