How often to emerge world?

[pinion]

Over the years, I commonly run into the joy of not updating my system often enough. How often do you emerge -avuDN world, and what strategies do you use to aid with that. For instance, I am thinking I should start monthly, and I already have

[eccerr0r]

"often enough" ...

Definitely should emerge --sync much more often than once a month.

That way, glsa-check can help you identify packages that have security problems. You should also check for pending updates, so you can plan ahead how much pain to expect to actually do the update.

This last cycle I think I let the update cycle go too long, but it wasn't too bad to fix...
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[fedeliallalinea]

Usually I sync once or twice a week, keeping the GLSA under control
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[Josef.95]

I --sync and update my desktop system every day.
That give my of the small updates time for better look in the details.
(this works for me on the last ~12 Years fine) :)

[Maxxx]

once a week

[Juippisi]

~2-4 times a month yeah. Im thinking of moving back from git to rsync because of how unoften I sync. I just wait for upgrades on packages that I use, and sync when they are updated. Like firefox.

[pinion]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I sync daily, but as far as diving into the emerge -avuDN world, how often do you guys do that? I tend to wait 3-6 months on most of the big packages, which is always too long.

[Erdie]

I sync and update about 2 or 3 times a week. It does not take a long time if you sync frequently except firefox / libreoffice or similar updates.
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[fturco]

I update Gentoo on my main computer every week.

[NeddySeagoon]

pinion,

It all depends on what changes. I have several installs to maintain, so I do the main one weekly.
It still has all the packages and distfiles since it was new in 2009. As its ~amd64, a good selection of older packages is important.
Every now and again something breaks and I have to revert to older versions. Binary packages make that fairly painless.

When something key, like gcc, portage, security or something in a news item catches my eye, I do an exceptional update on all the rest.
Everything else is routinely once a month.

As I use distcc on some of the lower power systems, I have to take care to have the same versions of gcc everywhere.

I have updated systems several years old. Its a wonderful learning experience.
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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.

[Anon-E-moose]

daily cron
I do an rsync of the filesystem to my backup (raid mirrored) drive that also does a tar backup of the /usr/portage directory.
then
emerge --sync

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I usually run "emerge -pvuD @world" when I get up and log in, just to see what's going on, and then may or may not run a real emerge.

I usually run this "emerge -pvuDN @world" every week or two along with depclean with pretend flag.
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[eccerr0r]

If you don't want to emerge update world every day (which is most of us...), at least sync every few days to a week or so. I think 2 weeks is a bit long, and a month is way too long.

Then with

[paluszak]

I sync portage on my server every day with a cron script that also emails me results of emerge -uDNvp @world. Not so often with some VMs and desktop systems, but usually at least once a month.

[ct85711]

I know for me, I usually update once a week to on the rare time every other week. I know for me, I rarely use the --new-use or changed-use, but my USE flags generally don't get changed (my last interval on USE flag change was over 6 months, for a minor thing at that).

The general rule of thumb to always keep in mind, is that the longer stretch between updates, more packages need updated (thus higher chance for conflicts and issues). The other part to remember, is unstable branch changes more frequently than stable branch. Personally, I think weekly updates (sync should be done before you install any package in that day's span) tends to be a sweet spot, in that it isn't too frequent to be a hassle, while keeping the number of packages needed to update down to minimize conflicts.

Beyond that, the other big factor that tends to help is for when the system stabilizes down; as in you are not adding/removing packages or changing USE flags. As once it is where you have it where you want it, and leave it there, you can gradually trim down un-needed packages (reducing possible issues later on).

A good example would be like my system, that settled down to where I want it over 2 years ago. Any conflict I run into is uncommon now, and I gradually trim excess off once every few months. I recently trimmed qt5 off my system as it was unnecessary, with a side bonus of getting rid of a common issue area. In a couple months, I may remove another package that isn't needed, further trimming the excess fat from the system while keeping the purpose/usage usable.

[LuxJux]

For me, just a beginner I update every day.
But doing monthly saving with <some Program> even Win whole of all BS partitions.
Just for me, it is a good goal for staying close to updates.

Have heard it is not good nettiquette. But when recopying, before --sync, always /distfile is deleting.

So many failures while trying to configure/update. I need my backups.

[leifbk]

This is my daily morning coffee routine:

[figueroa]

The following script runs from crontab at 6:30 every morning: