Possible: Gentoo as a web server ?

YeniBir · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2006 Posts: 3

Hi all,

I want to set-up a linux based server, everybody' told me to use debian or centos, but in fact i do not like them much. I really like gentoo but nobody's recommended gentoo as a web server. What do you guys thinking? Is gentoo a bleeding edge for server use? Anyone use it for web server? (sorry if I am asking the dumbest question)

thanks a lot

kfiaciarka · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:52 am Post subject:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Index:Apache2
Read some howto's about it:)

Shopro · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:53 am Post subject:

I'm running Gentoo as web server amongst other services it runs for our company. Never though Gentoo as too bleeding edge, at least then if one only applies security updates on the server. I can recommend Gentoo for server use.
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YeniBir · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2006 Posts: 3

@kfiaciarka, I've read all of them. Best wiki ever online. But I've needed someone to courage me to use it.

@Shopro, one more question, I've read lots of emerge problem about stopped service or unstabilized systems. Did you have any update problem?

jhunholz · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject:

My webserver is running Gentoo and I haven't had any problems at all! Just don't be too hasty to upgrade everythign when new releases come out. Give them time to make sure they work well, then its safe to upgrade.
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RlC · Guru Joined: 30 Jul 2005 Posts: 358 Location: austria

even if you post in a windows forum, they would recommend it :twisted:

i read people recommended not gentoo because you have to compile everything. and a webserver would need his ressources for "other things"
however, if you want to upgrade (eg. php5), there come a lot of problems (ok, i donÂ´t know about other distros), which can cause downtime.

but if your life doesnÂ´t depend on the server running, there isnÂ´t a reason not to use gentoo

Ctrl+Alt+Del · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 326 Location: .de

I am running apache on gentoo for a corporate intranet and one at home. Works like a charm, just make sure you made your homework prior to upgrading. Unlike Debian an upgrade may very well result in breakage from time to time if you don't pay attention to announcements or newsletters.

aidanjt · Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:20 pm Post subject:

Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

Gentoo as a web server makes alot of sense, especially when running stuff like rrdtool+cacti that isnt officially supported by redhat or centos.

All of mine basically do the same jobs so I use one chrooted install to make binaries for all of the rest; that way I know it works before I update the production machines, also saves alot of redundancy.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

In any enterprise environment, any critical service should be redundant to the point that a total failure of any single piece of hardware will not interrupt service. You should be able to walk up to any server and yank the plug, and nobody notices. The notions of redundancy and failover were made to make your life easier as an administrator, and make the enterprise more able to deal with an unfortunate day in the server room. In real life, that gets harder and harder to do but it's still possible. Some services are very hard to share between two pieces of hardware.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/mod/mod_unique_id.html has clustering info as a starting point. In web servers, sometimes even if you don't have a cluster you can make a sort of a "redneck redundancy". If your pages are mostly static, then put them on CVS and make all your http servers refresh from CVS every so often. That not only allows you to keep all of them synchronized, it makes it so you can test your site on a nonproduction machine without any risk of damage to your public page. If you're using dynamic content, it's still possible that CVS would work for you, or any application server you might use could offer a server farm context.

All of enterprise business, when political BS is thrown aside, wants uptime and bandwidth. They want ASSURANCE of that, they want confidence that the system will work. If your services are correctly maintained and are sufficiently redundant, then your uptime and your bandwidth are going to be fine.

Gentoo pulls sources from the standard places probably more often than most distributions, but IMHO the individual groups will concentrate more on more recent revisions than they do on past ones. The fix will get to the most recent stable branch sooner than 2 revs back, because they'll get it working there and then either they (apache, for example) will backport to a stable branch, or the distro managers will backport to some more archaic one that (apache) doesn't maintain anymore. So the most recent stable branch seems to be the place most of us would want to pull from.

If you have redundant servers, and you only upgrade one at a time, then your services will not fail in the overall sense. You as an administrator are responsible for making sure every service works, no matter what distro or what operating system. If you feel comfortable that you can either figure out the changes in the server or pull back the original working one, then Gentoo will work for you. If there is no such operating system for which this is true, then either you need a new IT guy or you need to reengineer your environment.

Bad Penguin · Guru Joined: 18 Aug 2004 Posts: 507

tomk · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:19 am Post subject:

FWIW all of Gentoo's webservers (forums, bugs, www, etc.) run Gentoo in production environments without (m)any problems. The main thing to take into account, as other people have said, is to ensure that you plan your upgrades and that you know what's going to change. There's no point in blindly doing an emerge world on a production box ever and having a spare box to test things out on is always a plus.
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Bohemian · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:39 pm Post subject:

I've had no problems running Gentoo as a server.

Some high-end servers run it, in fact. Don't ask me to quote which, though.
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xglad · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:56 am Post subject:

I don't think that Debian and friends make for a better, easier to manage, or more stable server than Gentoo does provided you do a few simple things. As noted above, pay attention to the mailing lists and announcements of the distro and apps that you use and look into redundant solutions.

Maybe most importantly, at least in a business situation, test the hell out of it in a test bed on the exact same hardware you will use in production before you actually put anything into production use. This goes for fresh installs and upgrades of the OS, apps, and custom apps/configurations. If you don't do this, regardless of OS or distribution, you will pay the price (down time) eventually. Personally, I don't care if Gentoo, Debian, Microsoft, or Sun says "this is stable". Until it proves to be stable on my hardware with the apps I need to use configured the way I configure them, I don't consider it stable, let alone ready for production.

asiobob · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:01 am Post subject:

I manage Gentoo in a production enviorment.
Apache churns out our intranet portal.
Samba manages out ~200 user domain.

A while back Apache herd at gentoo changed the config file structure and that caused grief for alot of people
I however know of the migration guide so there was no real issue.

Our uptime is average, nothing to amazing but then again I've never encountered a service crashing.