Hardly changed decisions (after installation) - A LIST

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Hardly changed decisions (after installation) - A LIST

Hello.

I would like to make a list of every decisions in the install process of Gentoo that is NOT EASILY changed afterwards.

For example : partitioning scheme, filesystem types, using encryption for the whole system, etc.

Any idea's welcome :)

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*** UPDATE : The list of hardly changed things after install (as of 2015-04-22) ***

1. Partitionning
2. Filesystem
3. CHOST
4. Profile type
5. 32 bit vs 64 bit

(*). Gentoo itself

manuels · Advocate Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 2146 Location: Europe

I love using lvm!
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NathanZachary · Moderator Joined: 30 Jan 2007 Posts: 2605

This is a great idea for a thread, but it probably should be in Gentoo Chat instead. I will notify the moderator team.
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desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 11:23 am Post subject:

muaddib,

Changing CHOST.

Users who think they need to do this actually started with the wrong tarball. However, when glibc dropped support for CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu" there was a Chinging CHOST guide produced, as many such users had no choice if they wanted to stay current with glibc.

Health Warning
This setting only affects your toolchain, not the code it produces, which is set by your CFLAGS. Users with CHOST="i486-pc-linux-gnu" on i686 systems should not try to fix it. It means that you have a toolchain that will run on an i486 CPU, so your compiles will take a little longer, maybe seconds but compared to the time taken to do the 'fix' its just not worth it.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

[...] Away to another distro (Archlinux)... and back as usual. Nothing is better than Gentoo, that's REALLY true. [...]

So here I'm back after a pause of a few months and I'd like to get more items on the list of hardly changed things AFTER install.

Any idea? Especially if you are a system administrator. Any settings hard to change, any programs, etc.

As of now, it looks like this :

1. Disk partitionning
2. Filesystem type (including encryption)
3. CHOST

What else?

timeBandit

Genone · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 12:17 am Post subject:

Profile type. While it's (usually) trivial to change the profile within a given type (e.g. from default/2007.0 to default/2008.0), switching between e.g. default, hardened and uclibc profiles is a lot more complicated, if possible at all.

Captain Newbie · Apprentice Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 182 Location: Socal

I had little trouble changing my CHOST from 386 to 686 a few years ago, although I'm probably just lucky, and followed the instructions at gentoo.org to the letter. It's not something I would want to do regularly, though.

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d2_racing · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 1:57 am Post subject:

Changing the filesystem

neysx · Retired Dev Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 795

neysx · Retired Dev Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 795

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

neysx ("Choosing Gentoo. 6 years on and I still can't undo that choice")

That's SO true! Over the years (I've been here since pretty much the beginning of Gentoo), four times I've tried another distro. EVERY TIME I came back running to my patiently waiting Gentoo which knew I wouldn't be able to live without it.

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Good to see that the list of hardly changed decisions isn't that long and, as some pointed out, that some of the items on the list can be changed afterall.

1. Partitionning
2. Filesystem
3. CHOST
4. Profile type

(*). Gentoo itself

If you have more ideas, don't hesitate to post!

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Anymore ideas about hardly changed decisions (after installation)?

rafo · Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 11:25 pm Post subject:

Declaring in /etc/make.conf to use unstable packages for everything. I did it once ... and after a while I made an install from scratch, which seemed the easiest way back to a sane system.

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Building a new Gentoo soon... Thinking about what I should REALLY plan ahead once more, I remembered this old post. Anyone with new ideas. Thanx.

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Off Gentoo for almost five years... what a shame ! But always coming back.

I was wondering, anything new I should pay attention too.

Anyone with new ideas regarding hardly changed options set at first install.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

Did a fresh install recently. Your list seems fine. Everything else is just compiles.
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krinn · Watchman Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 7470

arch: choosing 32bits and swtiching to 64bits (as you have add ram...), chost, multi<>multilibs.
if you mistake on partitions/fs it should be no problem for everyone, if you cannot backup your partitions for the switch, then you have a problem, but not because you did bad choice at first, as you will soon see.

WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

lmv <-- seconded

much more fun and crazy flexibility! This is the modern way of doing things, else btrfs or zfs. But btrfs doesn't have support for volumes.

user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Great to be back ! Thank you all for your replies !

Simba7 · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2015 2:52 am Post subject:

Well, package.mask, .unmask, and .use are now directories. Not quite sure why they did that recently.

arnvidr · l33t Joined: 19 Aug 2004 Posts: 629 Location: Oslo, Norway

Kethreveris · n00b Joined: 16 Feb 2009 Posts: 16 Location: Rethwallen

One thing I wish I had started from the beginning, was alternate boot environments.
Have 2 separate EXT3/4 partitions for the Root FS / OS. Then having the following
separate from root FS. (In my case, I used soft-links to my dumping ground.)

/usr/portage/distfiles
/usr/src
/home
/dumping_ground
...

For updates, ABEs make things much nicer. With 2 ABEs I basically do a "rsync" with
"--delete" from my current to the prior. Alter a few files like "fstab" and "grub.conf", then
reboot to the new ABE. Make my Gentoo updates. If they go south, rare but happens,
a simple reboot to the prior ABE restores functionality.

It was hard to re-do after the fact. Easier for a new install.

Now with BTRFS, my ABEs and all my file systems are in 1 partition. Easier dealing
with the space, (and using snapshots for new ABE). ZFS should be similar. But I still
separate out the RootFS from all the others.
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user118696 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 276

Thank you Kethreveris.

Interesting idea... but is it really worth the effort ?

You must be running quite unstable stuff...