emerging currently running processes and interruptions

[kyptin]

I hope this hasn't been addressed before, but I searched and didn't find it.

I recently read about a PostGreSQL vulnerability, and since I am hosting a website with PHP/PostGreSQL on a Gentoo box, I figured it would be best if I upgraded. However, the machine (lovingly refered to as "The Moldy Crow") is slow: a Pentium 133, and it (as in anything, but especially emerging) takes forever. I made the mistake of starting it when I went home for the weekend via PuTTY + SSH, and now I am paranoid one of my family members will come in and accidentally crash Windows, causing all the past few days of compiling to be for naught. So my (first) question is, will I be able to resume it where it left off if my SSH connection is interrupted for some reason? If I suspend it via ctrl-Z and resume it in the background via bg, can I safely log off and have the emerge continue?

Also, PostGreSQL is currently running (postmaster I think is the name of the service). The way I understand it, emerge postgresql won't interrupt the service, so that my website's uptime can be maintained. However, when I emerge clean, would it be a good idea to stop the postmaster service and any others associated with PostGreSQL, or does it matter? I thought I remembered reading somewhere that you shouldn't emerge KDE and run it at the same time...is this a good idea in general, or specifically for KDE (or do I just falsely remember that)?

Oh, one more thing. I have heard mention of the "binary" option for emerge (-b). Are binaries available for all types of processor architectures? The Pentium 133 is, of course, an i586. The binary option doesn't seem to be mentioned very much in the documentation. I think I could avert future potential disasters such as this one if emerge could happen within a few minutes, as opposed to days. (Incidentally, installing Gentoo 1.2 from stage 1 on the Moldy Crow took over a month.)

Thanks for the help!

[Naan Yaar]

Regarding the first question. If someone kills the ssh session, the current emerge will be borked. ssh will 'wait' for the process to terminate if you try to do a ^Z and logout unless the process was started with stdin/out/err redirected. You can also use "screen" on your remote box for future sessions that will allow you to do all kinds of nifty things with suspending and continuing sessions. This thread has some pointers. This thread has a script that will allow you to minimize downtime for essential services across an emerge.

-b is to build the binary package in addition to emerging. You can use the binary on other boxes to emerge packages without rebuilding from source. However, you need to get the binaries built for your platform in the first place.

[kyptin]

Wow, thanks, that pretty much answered all my questions. And that softmerge script...I might hafta start using that. I wonder if it's in the Gentoolkit.... (Gentoo Forums OWN! ) Thanks again.

[gir]

Coincidentally I just started a 'emerge -e world' last night and over a bowl of cereal this morning it hit me that I'm going to have to install over running applications and loaded libraries (glibc, my slew of daemons, etc...) which might or might not work. While the script linked to in the post above works if emerging a daemon or service there is still no way to automate that for a 'emerge -e world' or 'emerge -u world' is there?

I guess I also want to broaden the scope of this thread and ask what happens during an 'emerge -e world' when applications are already resident in memory and running? I can't imagine that emerge is able to replace the binary or .a or .so while the system is using it. My knowledge of linux's application init code is currently nonexistent so I guess that if linux loaded all of the apps binary (and required libs) into memory on init then emerge would be fine... just reboot and all applications will be up to date. However, if things like shared libs get loaded dynamically (which I think they do) then emerge could really munge things up with an 'emerge -e world'.

Somebody care to refute and clarify my presupposed problems with 'emerge -e world'? (Please refute... I'm in the middle of an whole tree rebuild! ) If I am correct in my assumptions, what is the prescribed method of rebuilding one's system. I can't think of any method of upgrading that wouldn't require *some* part of my system to be loaded.

[rac]

[gir]