CGOG2: Have you ever re-installed due to failed upgrade?

TheLexx · Last edited by TheLexx on Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

In this poll, I am wanting to know how the average user fares at keeping there Gentoo system current.

Please choose the best option that would explain your history of Gentoo usage. Only count re-installs due to not being able to upgrade with emerge. Do not count re-installs do to a major system upgrade such as moving from x86 to amd64.

Situation Never1 -- I started using Gentoo less than two years ago, and once my system was up and running it has been continuously upgraded and has never required a fresh install.

Situation Never2 -- same as above, but you have been running Gentoo for more than two years but less than six years.

Situation Never3 -- same as above, but you have been running Gentoo for six or more years.

Situation Retry1 -- I had to do one fresh install only once because it had gotten too out of date. But now I am committed to keeping it up-to-date.

Situation Retry2 -- After the second time doing a fresh install, I am now committed to keeping it up to date.

Situation Cyclic1 -- I re-install Gentoo on a regular basis, about every two or more years. I do this because I prefer to upgrade this way, or I can't get emerge update world to work, or I just think it is not worth the effort to debug emerge update world.

Situation Cyclic2 -- Same as above, but with re-installs more often than once every two years.

Situation Hopeless -- Judging from my past experience, I can keep the system upgrading with emerge update for about three or four months, but then I loose interest in upgrading. Soon emerge will not work to install any new software. I then just stick with outdated software, or compile it outside of emerge. Continue this way for a year or two or more as long as I can stand it. Then I start the whole process all over again.

EDIT: expanded Cyclic1 and Cyclic2 to include more scenarios

John R. Graham · Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:04 pm Post subject:

Situation Never3:

creaker · l33t Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 651

I think there is missing one option: "Situation Always - I prefer to have it freshly installed instead of updated" .
I would choose this option if it was presented in the list

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:34 pm Post subject:

I have to disagree on that. I used to install every new OS (to me) twice, just to learn how it goes. After installing Gentoo I realized there is no need for second install. Anything you do can be undone.
I just converted a 64-bit no-multilib into multilib, for instance.
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:40 pm Post subject:

I've never needed to reinstall.

I have emerge sync set up for 3 or so in the morning on cron,
check for upgrades no more than a few day apart.
I've never found a need to reinstall.

I also keep a backup of /root, minus /home and /usr/portage that are on their own partitions.
And I keep a 4 week backup of /root, done on Sunday.

If anything went wrong due to upgrade or hardware failure then I could reinstall the latest and keep going.
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nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap · Guru Joined: 25 Sep 2007 Posts: 388 Location: Canada

Before an update I alway backup a copy of /boot and / to other partitions.
The backup can be used "instead of a rescue cd" and they can be copied back to the original partitions to restore them if something gets broken.

That said, I have never had a system break due to an upgrade. I do, however, break them from time to time because I enjoy experimenting (playing)
with my basic gentoo partition. It is at such times that I am glad to have a backup.

TheLexx · Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:05 pm Post subject:

creaker · l33t Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 651

augury · l33t Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 722 Location: philadelphia

I have two systems in front of me, both of which cannot be upgraded. The 2xeno is walking wounded. The laptop functions OK. ~@~ it quakes

My rented server is recovering from wu of`64. I hope to vpn.

augury · l33t Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 722 Location: philadelphia

Mind you that a package that does not emerge is a sinking package.

With that in mind, sync has not pulled a larger load and road to @%@ built is rough.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 1:23 pm Post subject:

Well since i have this piece of hardware it has gentoo on it. Well 3 days with preinstalled oem windows vista was enough to ditch it. I needed 3 days to download gentoo isos, burn them and ot read the documentations.

My other notebook had the same but died because of a mechanical issue and the hardware got too old.

Arch linux comes close to gentoo but when you realize that you need something all those binary distros are hopeless.

I tried to install SUSE, fedore, and other distros on other hardware and realized how limited it is. Linux mint was a bit better but got ugly recently.

For my main hardware it is gentoo. even on my cheapy notebook with slow dual core cpu. for the other notebooks which are used by other family members i use linux mint and never update those boxes, as these are hardly connected to the net anyway. For playing card games it does not matter how outdated a gnu linux is. updating an old linux mint requires a reinstall and manually updating with apt-get is a pain.

updating my backup os, arch linux is also a pain, i gave up after it was cli bootable after a atempt to upgrade it. well upgrading with the provided tools should not break hole box, i expierenced this several times with arch linux and lxde gui from ubuntu / linux mint. The problem resides because I could not find any required packages or any way to get apt-get running again to complete the install. Ether it complains about the repros or other stuff which are unable to update. The official way to ugprade those are a reinstall which annoys me at the end.

I updated once an outdated box in gentoo, it is possible and thats matters. But the only way I recommend is to emerge --unmerge everything. Comes down to the hole X-server and the desktop environment and upgrade only the system because you need to uninstall anyway all these packages because there is an upgrade available.

First thing is kernel, than get the system profile up to date and than start building the x-server again with a new choice of the desktop environment because, e.g. gnome 2 was gone.

TheLexx · Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:11 am Post subject:

This is a followup question for those 12 people (up to now) that say that they have been running Gentoo for six or more years and continuously upgrading. How would would you classify those systems, text based systems (like a server), minimum X11 systems, or full KDE/Gnome desktop systems.

Jaglover · Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:27 am Post subject:

Lightweight desktops/nettops, servers.
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Fri Jan 31, 2014 10:36 am Post subject:

In my case, I have a server (apache, samba and a few odd services) combination single user desktop.
I just don't shut it down or reboot it daily.

I don't let the system boot into a graphic, but console (runlevel 3) and use startx when I want to do graphic.
I run lxde now, have run gnome and xfce in the past. Tried KDE wasn't my cup of tea.
Do keep gtk+ and qt libraries around.
I've had HAL, *kit, pam, dbus installed in the past, but have since removed them all, without having to reinstall anything.

I've had to replace the main disk once, but used a backup so I don't consider
that a reinstall as it left me where I was before swapping disks.

I'm picky about upgrades.
I don't blindly emerge, I check and see what would be installed before I do it.
The same for depclean and revdep.
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greyspoke · Apprentice Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Posts: 171

Angrychile · Apprentice Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 235

My first install was in 2004, but that PC has hit the dust, so, in actual time, I'm just shy of the 6 year mark.

I recently used Ubuntu and I believe I did have to reinstall once. Gentoo? Pah! After you get a hang of it, I guess, reinstalls are really unnecessary.
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Logicien · Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2014 1:44 am Post subject:

What about the --emptytree emerge option? Is that an upgrade or a reinstall? You can use that option in both cases depending on if you emerge --sync or not before if I understand well.

WorBlux · n00b Joined: 07 May 2011 Posts: 39

Current system is just over two and a half years, had a few head-scratchers on that one like the Bluetooth applet dissappearing from gnome-bluetooth 2 to 3 (blacklisted 3 to fix it)
Another system just over a year now no big problems.
My first system I ever had Gentoo on was powered off for nine months. That was hopeless, ended up installing Debian.

John R. Graham · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 6:50 pm Post subject:

platojones · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 7:26 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:04 pm Post subject:

nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap · Guru Joined: 25 Sep 2007 Posts: 388 Location: Canada

Yminus · Apprentice Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 184

ct85711 · Veteran Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 1791

I'm a strange one, in that I don't really fall directly in any one category. I am partly, in Never3, Retry2, and Other. My main computer is going on year 6 of continous updating, I have another that more of falls in Other in that, it was really outdated and manually worked my system to a newer version; and I have a 3rd computer that I end up reinstalling for the fun of it (yes I am crazy like that).

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Depends what you define "reinstall" as. I interpret it as "redoing the handbook, overwriting a machine that can already boot".