"Gentoo unsuitable for mission critical servers"

[roderickvd]

http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Cons: [...] unsuitable for mission critical servers.

I don't want to start an OS or Linux distro war here, so please let's stick to just Gentoo. And I'm wondering: does anyone agree on this topic? Granted, Gentoo 1.1a had its fair share of child diseases so to speak, but all of Gentoo's core components have matured and are, in my opinion, highly stable.

Not only does Gentoo itself seem to be stable to me, so do all of the subcomponents when you're running stable (i.e. not ~arch). I am running Gentoo on a couple of mission critical servers and am delighted to do so.

Does anyone agree with the above statement and if so, why?

[Matje]

I run gentoo quite happily on several gameservers, a 0.5 TB FTP, an apache box and a router... So I totally disagree. If I where to set up a colocation server, it would probably too be gentoo...

EDIT: 0.5 TB that is

[frippz]

Not that it is a mission critical server, but I have run Gentoo on a combined file-, FTP-, web- and SFTP/SSH-server plus DC-hub and some other stuff with 6 regular clients using the server daily. It ran for 152 days straight without a hitch. The reason we lost uptime was due to a power failure that hit the entire facility the server was residing in.

I'd say those statements are not quite true anymore...

[lurid]

People probably just assume the computer is down, or less functional, due to long compile time and therefore is unsuited for use in a situation where downtime isn't an option. Gentoo is no less stable or no less robust as Red Hat, but installing an RPM and restarting a service sounds much nicer than compiling programs from source. Which really is a shame, programs on Linux *should* be compiled per machine, Gentoo or not. Either way, I think people with these opinions have either not used Gentoo much, or have just gone through the long installation process to write a review and feel that everything will take as long as Gnome or KDE did.

I don't use my machine for serving anything at all, but its downtime is next to nothing. I emerge things daily and my desktop keeps right on chuggin with 2.5.69-mm3 (yes, I know its up to 8 now). The only time my machine needs to be restarted is to boot a new kernel.

[mezz]

When, Gentoo Linux gets mature and this sentence will be change. From my review, Gentoo Linux is not mature, yet.

[roderickvd]

When would you consider it mature mezz? Perhaps you're right that things are still subject to change. But like I said, they are stable.

I do agree however that Gentoo doesn't have proper release engineering. 1.4 has been in RC stages forever and has seen many fundamental changes and feature additions. Instead, a feature freeze should have been called.

[bsolar]

Cons: [...] unsuitable for mission critical servers.

IMHO it reads: "Not everybody is able to set-up Gentoo to be suitable for mission critical servers."

[gigel]

imo gentoo will suit just fine on a server...cause it's really really easy to maintain

[Koon]

Maybe they mean you don't have / can't buy technical support from the editor... a feature needed for real mission-critical servers ?

-K

[Cossins]

Or maybe they mean you can't sue anyone when something screws up...

Nah, mostly I think it's because of the time required for installing new programs... Getting a production server up and running with Gentoo from scratch does take a certain amount of time (half a day?). And then, even when we're just talking minor security updates (the Apache/PHP/MySQL trio comes to mind), everything must be compiled again...

I do believe Gentoo needs a bit more manpower than the average binary distribution...

- Simon

[Korean Ian]

It means quite simply that it is impractical for a mission critical server... I think interms of the inital setup time.

Many gentoo users use it at home and are willing to accept the long compile times OR they use it at work and have another machine avalible so as to not loose productivity.

Just IMO

KI

[Matje]

Or maybe they mean you can't sue anyone when something screws up...

Nah, mostly I think it's because of the time required for installing new programs... Getting a production server up and running with Gentoo from scratch does take a certain amount of time (half a day?). And then, even when we're just talking minor security updates (the Apache/PHP/MySQL trio comes to mind), everything must be compiled again...

I do believe Gentoo needs a bit more manpower than the average binary distribution...

- Simon

U _can_ compile the packages on another box you know...

[kraylus]

I run gentoo quite happily on several gameservers, a 0.5 TB FTP, an apache box and a router... So I totally disagree. If I where to set up a colocation server, it would probably too be gentoo...

EDIT: 0.5 TB that is

somehow, i dont see game servers falling under the mission critical category. nor does most of the applications you guys are using it for. compared to something like debian or slackware, gentoo probably wouldn't work well in a mission critical environment. by mission critical, i'm referring to something that consists of 20+ servers perhaps, and if any amount of servers would go down, a company or companies would lose money. that, to me, is mission critical.

this of course is based on the many times that i've read and experienced the problem where gentoo just quits for no apparent reason. something breaks, then slowy (or fastly) everything else goes to shit.

**edit**

took some stuff out... didn't want to sound like a troll.

[steveb]

somehow, i dont see game servers falling under the mission critical category. nor does most of the applications you guys are using it for. compared to something like debian or slackware, gentoo probably wouldn't work well in a mission critical environment. by mission critical, i'm referring to something that consists of 20+ servers perhaps, and if any amount of servers would go down, a company or companies would lose money. that, to me, is mission critical.

okay... i did not wanted to post a response to this thread, but your message got me to the point to post now.

i run serval mission critical servers. and some of them are runing on gentoo linux (the others are runing on red hat. maybe i move them to gentoo.... but not in the near future. i don't have time to do the migration/switch now). and gentoo is very well doing his job on those servers. i don't miss anything in gentoo what i would not miss in any other linux distro.

this of course is based on the many times that i've read and experienced the problem where gentoo just quits for no apparent reason. something breaks, then slowy (or fastly) everything else goes to shit.

gentoo linux is in no way diffrend then any other distro.
when you breake it, then your break it. no matter where.
and nothing is just "happening for no reason". if you emerge like crazy and try that package and install this and that... and all of this on a productive server, then you don't have to complain about breaking up things.
and if you realy manage a server, then you find your ways how the keep downtime as low as possible. and you do your homework (backup, maintenance, security updates, etc. etc.). and all of this not only applys to gentoo! every os needs care (some time it eaven needs more care then a women )

**edit**

took some stuff out... didn't want to sound like a troll.

cheers

SteveB

[shm]

somehow, i dont see game servers falling under the mission critical category. nor does most of the applications you guys are using it for.

Uh, considering that game servers tend to eat up more resources than most web servers, why do you think this? There are a great deal of game hosting companies out there. I'm sure if a game server went down, you'd have angry clients wondering why they can't access their game server. I used to pay $65 a month for a quake3 server, and I sure would have been bitching :O

However, on the rest, I agree with you.. I'd rather use Debian stable... it's a lot more tried and tested than Gentoo is. Even using stable Gentoo arch, you'd have quite new software such as GCC 3.x... Debian stable, on the other hand, has the uber-stable GCC 2.9.x... and the list goes on.

[bsolar]

Sorry for the old quote from the GWN of 14.04.2003:

Meanwhile Back in Reality: Italian Consultancy Deploys Gentoo Linux

Verona, a rather attractive spot in Northern Italy, is better known for its historic arena dating from the Roman empire (and notorious for butchering opera master pieces at that same location). A lesser known fact is that it's currently spearheading Gentoo's move to professional corporate use: Euronia, a technology consultancy firm in Verona, made the switch from SuSE to Gentoo Linux for their own computers as early as release 1.0, and started offering services based on Gentoo six months ago. Their customers include Banca Populare di Verona e Ravenna, the largest banking group in the region, where Euronia set up a proxy for 7500 users, a reverse SSL proxy, secure FTP and other servers, all powered by Gentoo Linux. At Antex (a major HR consultancy in Italy), the tax calculations for 150,000 pay checks each month are done on a Gentoo-based SQL server, and a handful of other banks had Euronia switch their web servers to Gentoo as their operating system, too. Euronia's push for Gentoo Linux in corporate server solutions is easily explained: "We find that Gentoo Linux is the most advanced distro available", says Andrea Gagliardi, head of technology at Euronia. "We build solutions for customers, like the servers we usually base on EVMS-enabled Vanilla kernels with a dozen other stable patches thrown in, or our embedded Xfree on Aquapads (diskless tablet PCs). Nothing we've tried makes setting up and deploying all those customizations more manageable than Gentoo".

Definately "mission critical" applies.

[avenj]

When, Gentoo Linux gets mature and this sentence will be change. From my review, Gentoo Linux is not mature, yet.

Can you elaborate, please?

I'm always interested in hearing constructive criticism and suggestions (rather than random "Gentoo sucks" statements, which are blatant trolls).

[Matje]

somehow, i dont see game servers falling under the mission critical category. nor does most of the applications you guys are using it for. compared to something like debian or slackware, gentoo probably wouldn't work well in a mission critical environment. by mission critical, i'm referring to something that consists of 20+ servers perhaps, and if any amount of servers would go down, a company or companies would lose money. that, to me, is mission critical.

I can understand your point of view, however, to the gamers that pay rather much for a three day lan party it is critical that servers don't fall out every five minutes or that they aren't laggy. If they're not happy, they won't come again, and we lose money because the aimed amount of people don't come. See here for a description of our setup. That NFS server and also our FTP are under heavy stress and they perform fine with gentoo, that's what I'm trying to say. As far as I'm concerned, Gentoo is stable and solid enough to be used as "mission critical" server and I wouldn't hesitate one minute to put it on an online apache box with thousands of visitors...

[474]

Cons: [...] unsuitable for mission critical servers.

Does anyone agree with the above statement and if so, why?

Absolutely not. This is simply hubris which isn't based on fact in any shape or form, IMHO. Although Gentoo may not have the same level of maturity (and that is a word which can be taken in various contexts which I do not intend to explore in this post) and resources (mainly human and financial I suspect) at its disposal as, say, Debian - I believe a statement like that should be substantiated. That it isn't, I find highly questionable.

If you feel like it, it's very easy to live on the bleeding edge and do silly things which will break your system, or render it unstable (pet hate: over-the-top CFLAGS). This is no indication of the overall stability of the distro.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is to mention something to other people who don't agree with this statement that there are three useful resources for us:

• #gentoo-server IRC channel (which is no longer shrouded in silence 24/7)
• Sysadmin's mailing list. Subscribe at gentoo-sysadmin-subscribe@gentoo.org.
• A wiki which can be found here.

Anyone and everyone with an interest in Gentoo for server/enterprise/networking usage (and that needn't mean that you're running a Fortune 100 company off the back of your box) is most welcome ....

[ultraslacker]

From distrowatch
Long and tedious system installation, occasional instability and risk of breakdown, unsuitable for mission critical servers.

Did I goof?? I'm running gentoo on my org's mission critical server! Everyone at work depends on this server being up and running. I'd better write up my resignation letter.

I've had my share of gentoo discussions - debian users tend to get a little rabid on this topic, I've noticed, and attack gentoo for stability, install time, and disaster recovery.

As far as stability, I have encountered no problems running vanilla sources on the server or, for that matter, gentoo-sources on workstations. Is the instability in portage packages? Well, hell, I've yet to encounter a problem there and can't see why this would be different from ports based systems such as freebsd. A good sysadmin inspects the package before installing...

Install time is a bitch even compared to bsd, but who says you have to start at stage1 - there are shortcuts!

In terms of disaster recovery, again it isn't that different from freebsd (which is my preferred server os), where componenets are built from source and backups of the system skip the source directories.

[avenj]

Use buildpkg with a NFS read/write mounted /usr/portage/packages and you can have automatic binaries to restore from sitting on a NFS server.

Gentoo is just as suited for production environments as other distributions.

[Koon]

Use buildpkg with a NFS read/write mounted /usr/portage/packages and you can have automatic binaries to restore from sitting on a NFS server.

Maybe we need more reference information/documentation on how to deploy Gentoo in server or group of workstations environements. I mean, the information *is* out there, but you have to search multiple forum posts and make your own idea on how to do it.

I don't mind doing this, but if it were in some "Gentoo for the enterprise howto" in the official Gentoo docs, it would both save time, give the official best practices and propagate the idea that portage is indeed suitable for enterprise deployments.

For example, I found lot of info on NFS-shared portage trees, but people seem to disagree on what to share, ro or rw, what would concurrent access to the tree do etc... The same for buildpkg : a lot of people seem to be using it, but this technique is kind of hidden when you look at Gentoo in the first place.

I don't say that it doesn't work or that the information is not out there, somewhere, I just say that for the sake of reference information and evangelisation maybe we need an "official" doc. I surely would contribute to it, and I know Kerframil already posted in the Doc forum several posts on the subject.

-K

[FruitCake]

use it in mission critical? hell yes.

i use gentoo as my main desktop at work, and as our development/production servers.

the compiling updates is a total non issue. I just upgraded my workstation from the 1.0 profile to the 1.4 profile (including the full recompile) while quite happily working on the box with no issues. it recompiled all 400 packages on my workstation over the period of a week and a half (its only a p2 350 with the emerge process on nice 19) while I continued working on the box with no interuptions and hit two major deadlines in our software release. This is all on the ~x86 tree, stable is just to boring

[uzik]

When, Gentoo Linux gets mature and this sentence will be change. From my review, Gentoo Linux is not mature, yet.

Please define 'mature'

If by that you mean bug free then there is no mature OS anywhere.

If by that you mean has the code received adequate testing you might
have an argument there. Since it's built on a per install basis then the
exact environment has probably never been tested.

Does it work? For my production server needs it works fine.
It doesn't crash and does what I require from it. It cost me
nothing but my time and I didn't have to install a LOT of extra
stuff I didn't need (as I would have done if I used another distro).

[mezz]

When, Gentoo Linux gets mature and this sentence will be change. From my review, Gentoo Linux is not mature, yet.

Can you elaborate, please?

I'm always interested in hearing constructive criticism and suggestions (rather than random "Gentoo sucks" statements, which are blatant trolls).

Install BSD and you will find the better example why Gentoo Linux isn't mature yet.. Here's my comments:

Code: Select all

Installtion:
     -No installer
        1) It gives us the less power.
        2) Waste the time, when you install on the fifty boxes. The installer
           will save the time to install those boxes without type a lot.
           Much lesser headaches and fingers ache, IMO.
     -Last time, I tried was like rc1 or so.. It doesn't has all drivers in
      the CD. The result, I have no connection to grab the stage tarballs
      (/usr/src/linux/ was empty). I was stuck in the chroot and CD, I had
      to create my own ISO file to add those stage tarballs. Slackware and
      Debian already have the drivers for my box, btw.
     -No VI by the default. Not everybody know about nano I am speaking of
      mirgrate from other *nix.

Portage:
     -No binary option.
     -Follow FHS? Nah, it doesn't. (Hint: /usr/ VS /usr/local/)  If you don't
      want to do the /usr/local/, you will have to remove about follow FHS.
      Then, create the doc and man page about Gentoo's file system hierarchy.
     -I want the different prefix, am I supposed to edit the rest ebuilds?
      or create script to edit them, but run it at the everytime? The define
      of prefix and others are pretty need.
     -Take the look at net-mail/qmail, there have many patches by default. I
      don't want those patch, am I supposed to edit the ebuilds at the each
      time when I update them? I personal prefer add the define in the
      /etc/make.conf or command (emerge -DNO_PATCH qmail).
     -All above give user the less power.
     -ebuilds should never touch any of files in the /etc/.

Update:
     -The world should never touch most of the /etc/*, IMHO. Last time, I
      remember it will overwrite the make.conf and few others. I believe
      this one is already improvement if I am correct.
     -*The method of 'protected directories' and manually merging changes to
      /etc/ is pretty primitive.  It seems to only be getting worse since
      every ebuild wants to change 20 files in /etc!
     -If I want to update apps, I have to edit each emerges as I stated
      above in the 'Portage:'. Define in the /etc/make.conf is need.

General:
     -*Documentation is not always good. The changelogs on ebuilds range from
      great to worthless.
     -*There's no print version of Documentation, it doesn't even fit in the
      regular size of printer. I had to download and tweak the HTML to get
      it corrects size for the print version. Ex: Right side is in the way
      and mess up the size.
     -*Gentoo doesn't have a base system with branches like BSD, your
      userland "base system" will forever be a bunch of ebuilds that are
      probably less well tested than the -current branch on FreeBSD and have
      no guarantee of playing nice together. I would like to see Gentoo
      encorporate a bare bones base system using emerge with -release and
      -stable branches. It really would be easy for them to do.
     -*things just break. I upgraded KDE from 3.0-3.1 and the fonts
      disappeared. Look on the forums and it's a common problem with no
      common solution. Nothing left to do but sit and wait for new ebuilds
      (a common activity for Gentoo users).

-  = I wrote..
-* = My friends wrote..