Updating old system

vanger · n00b Joined: 04 Jan 2014 Posts: 56

Hello!

I didn't update the system for more than a year. Am I right that the optimal way to update it is to load snapshots successively, starting from the closest to the last update, update system with him, and repeat that with more and more recent snapshots?

I mean optimal in the following way. The system is heavily used by me, so it would be great to have a working system at every update step. I'm a newbie in Gentoo, so I'd prefer a way with many simple steps to the one with a few hardcore ones. I'm in no hurry, in a way that I can live without the last update for a while.

Am I right that using the aforementioned strategy I would just have the system up to date to the time of a given snapshot? And as I would fight some update problems anyway, that way I would fight them more smooth?

And am I right that I need to use an old snapshot at least one time anyway because my profile (kde) changed to another one (plasma)?

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

vanger · n00b Joined: 04 Jan 2014 Posts: 56

Thank you a lot for your answer!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 9:42 am Post subject:

vanger,

I would opt for something half way between your incremental approach, which will be required for some packages and The Doctors, its faster to do a new install.
Yes, its faster to do a new install but you can update if you are determined enough.

You can get any portage snapshot you want over the past year. The problem will be the source tarballs which may no longer be on the Gentoo mirrors.
You will need to hunt them down.

I would go for broke, @system then @world and pick up the pieces as you go.

The fallback is Fix My Gentoo which allows you to build and install binary packages to fix almost any broken Gentoo install.

I would start with

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 5:44 pm Post subject:

Just my $0.02, a year isn't too bad, you should do a sync and emerge --pretend ... see how bad it really is, post the output, it may not really be that bad. A lot of the problems have indeed been run into by others and might have simple solutions.

I have way too many installs to update, one of which is on a USB stick that I constantly forget to update (plus the fact that it's flash, and don't want to update it too often in fear of flash wearout which would mean a reinstall.) That flash stick still seems to update fine after quite some time.

There are clearly some points within the continuum that have serious implications that make it hard to update. I think one of them happened recently but it was not nearly as tough as ones in the past (the "perl" problem that isn't really a "perl" problem) and depending on what packages you were using, it could go either way.

I would not go through snapshots of portage, that's way too much work overall. Do it in one big chunk or reinstall from scratch.
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Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 6:30 pm Post subject:

As the OP is using KDE, he is probably in for a really rocky ride after not updating his installation for more than a year.

A couple of days ago I finished updating the ~amd64 installation on my old Compal NBLB2 laptop (first-generation Core i7), which I had not touched for just over a couple of months. It took three days to update, including sorting out all the blockers and merging the latest version of KDE Plasma/Frameworks/Apps. Qt4, Qt5, icu, phonon, KDE4 and a few other things caused a lot of hassle. Anyway, the installation is bang up to date now. It's my fault for not updating it regularly. KDE can be a real swine to update if you leave it too long.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Not much to do with KDE software; it all depends on how well you have treated your system going into the big upgrade, e.g. how much cruft there is lingering for lack of running --depclean, how polluted your world file is with libraries not applications. Myself updating a legacy Plasma-4 system right now and portage properly auto-resolved 55 blockers, going well at === (143 of 265) currently.

Fitzcarraldo · Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2017 6:56 pm Post subject:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

There's a trick for when an upgrade does not add all of Qt to the depgraph (that can only happen when one of the Qt deps is left behind, because some of the revdep(s) got rid of it in the newer version):