Gentoo Apache2 Config Change Idiocy

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asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 6:59 am

Who was the genius who decided to change all the apache2 config files with the latest update? Now my finely tuned apache configuration is broken and its going to take me hours to fix it.

Great job, Gentoo apache team! Very professional move!

This is the last time I will EVER run gentoo on a machine that I depend on as a server.

ThiefMaster · Post by **ThiefMaster** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:38 am

-edited, since some people seem to misunderstand this posting-

asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:50 am

Well i got everything working finally. What a pain in the *** .

loki99 · Post by **loki99** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:05 am

You two guys should rather read the GWN or the gentoo dev mailing list (where it has been discussed for a couple of months!), before you start bitching at the gentoo devs!

What else should they do? Send you a personal email?

Link

And there even is a special gentoo doc for upgrading apache!

asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 9:24 am

loki99 wrote:You two guys should rather read the GWN or the gentoo dev mailing list (where it has been discussed for a couple of months!)

What else should they do? Send you a personal email?

I love how people are trying to justify this move by saying "oh read the mailing list" or the newletter, or my favorite "its a community distro." Its not a question of notification, its a question having .xx upgrade that requires a bunch of manual configuration just to be operational. Its completely insane!

loki99 · Post by **loki99** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 10:16 am

asv wrote: Its not a question of notification, its a question having .xx upgrade that requires a bunch of manual configuration just to be operational. Its completely insane!

It has nothing to do with .xx upgrade or x. upgrade! Apache was changed so it would be compliant with the upstream apache release. This way anyone who is an apache admin on any other distro can use apache on Gentoo and not have to relearn how to use it the Gentoo way.
They have work on this for over a year. Do you really expect them to wait for the next x. release to implement those changes?

I can understand that you are frustrated because of the trouble you had to go thru. But gentoo is fast moving and I'm very thankful, that the devs try to better it continuously!

So perhaps reading the GWN is well worth it. Hell, it is just one page every week! And you don't even have to read it. Just check for for any major changes.

But if you have a better idea how to handle something like that, I bet the devs (and me too!) would love to hear about it.

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 11:02 am

I don't see why everyone is going loopy over these changes. They've been discussed for some time and everyone has had PLENTY of warning.

Plus, it doesn't take hours to fix, nor does it require 'manual configuration just to be operational'. You edit the new httpd.conf with your changes (10 minute job), move the old config somewhere else, /etc/init.d/apache2 start. It took me all of half an hour (not including compile time) to get it up and running again.

tornamodo · Post by **tornamodo** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 12:55 pm

i like it the new way - because the httpd.conf file is just the standard way of configuring apache!

if you knew what you were doing, you wouldn't need more than 30 minutes for that...
if you didn't, you needed some practice anyway

asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:24 pm

Monkeh wrote: Plus, it doesn't take hours to fix, nor does it require 'manual configuration just to be operational'. .

Do you have to manually edit apache configuration files after the upgrade in order for apache to run? Yes!

While most of you may have machines with a handful of domains, a configuration with many domains and custom settings takes awhile to get back online. As I've said before its not a question of notice or warning. Its a question of pushing an update that breaks all existing apache configurations without an automated solution.

loki99 · Post by **loki99** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:30 pm

loki99 wrote: But if you have a better idea how to handle something like that, I bet the devs (and me too!) would love to hear about it.

I'm still waiting for an answer.

Monkeh · Post by **Monkeh** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:31 pm

An 'operational' apache, is one which runs and listens on a port for requests. Nothing more. You have to move your old config out so you don't end up confusing yourself, I don't call that manual configuration, I call it common sense.

The fact is, you were warned, you didn't have to update, and you didn't check to see exactly what the update did before installing it. If it caused you a lot of downtime, it's your own fault.

asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:46 pm

Monkeh wrote: The fact is, you were warned, you didn't have to update, and you didn't check to see exactly what the update did before installing it. If it caused you a lot of downtime, it's your own fault.

It didn't cause me a lot of downtime and again its not a question of being warned, its a question of expectations for a routine software update. I guess I just have elevated expectations from years of running debian and redhat. Do you honestly think Redhat would do a point release apache upgrade for RHEL4 that broke every exisiting configuration?

asv · Post by **asv** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:49 pm

loki99 wrote:
loki99 wrote: But if you have a better idea how to handle something like that, I bet the devs (and me too!) would love to hear about it.
I'm still waiting for an answer.

Well the best way to handle that would to keep the existing confuration scheme until a major apache update such as 2.x instead of 2.x.x.

tornamodo · Post by **tornamodo** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:11 pm

asv wrote:This is the last time I will EVER run gentoo on a machine that I depend on as a server.

if you're doing updates on a server which you depend on, you just have to check what the updates do!

there is nothing you should be complaining about except your own lazyness

especially if you use a server it's a good idea to use gentoo - because you can compile everything the way you want it to be.
you get just the most out of the server!

HydroSan · Post by **HydroSan** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:31 pm

Read the newsletters, keep up with the times, maintain packages and make sure nothing major changed between releases by the distro.

I thought every Linux sysadmin did this.

j79zlr · Post by **j79zlr** » Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:33 pm

This is why you should use a production OS for a production job, e.g. FreeBSD. I would never run a proction server with Gentoo, it just breaks too frequently, portage commits are not tested, and when they break, there is rarely a message, its just fixed without any notification. Half the time I have a compile error, I just wait a couple hours and resync, hmm error mysteriously fixed. This rarely happens with FreeBSD, ports are actually tested before commits, a practice that should be adopted, and no silly hard masked, soft masked crap. Tested, stable, committed.

Post by **pjp** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 5:43 am

asv wrote:Who was the genius who decided to change all the apache2 config files with the latest update? Now my finely tuned apache configuration is broken and its going to take me hours to fix it.

Great job, Gentoo apache team! Very professional move!

This is the last time I will EVER run gentoo on a machine that I depend on as a server.

Whatever problems may have been introduced, it is only the administrator's fault for not testing before making changes to a live system. I'm not even talking about reading mailing lists, etc.

Though regarding informing the Gentoo community, I'd like to see something dedicated to announcing "major changes." I don't want to read the GWN every week for the .001% of useful information I might need. Mailing lists aren't appropriate, as there are way too many, unless there was a means of identifying "important" traffic.

j79zlr wrote:no silly hard masked, soft masked crap. Tested, stable, committed.

Ignore hard and soft masks, and you don't have to worry about that "crap." Then its just a matter of more testing before the masked packages are made stable. (Which you can pretend didn't previously exist in a masked state.)

loki99 · Post by **loki99** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 6:54 am

pjp wrote: Though regarding informing the Gentoo community, I'd like to see something dedicated to announcing "major changes." I don't want to read the GWN every week for the .001% of useful information I might need. Mailing lists aren't appropriate, as there are way too many, unless there was a means of identifying "important" traffic.

It would be nice to have a RSS-feed announcing important changes!

Simba · Post by **Simba** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 7:46 am

loki99 wrote: What else should they do? Send you a personal email?

an sms would be great..

geekmug · Post by **geekmug** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 8:25 am

pjp wrote:Though regarding informing the Gentoo community, I'd like to see something dedicated to announcing "major changes."

What one person considers a "major update" is relative to what one does with their system. I have a laptop and a server running gentoo.. they use very different sets of packages. What would be ideal is a system for notifications based on what is installed on your system. I am sure many people would gladly sign up to a service in which portage notified a server about which packages they were interested in recieving major announcements about.

I'm not if I am being very clear about my idea, but I'm interested in it enough to make it happen just to avoid flamefests like this.

tornamodo · Post by **tornamodo** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 8:41 am

yeah - some server-update-related RSS-feed would be a sweet thing!

i think lots of people would love to subscribe there

amne · Post by **amne** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 9:37 am

Simba wrote:an sms would be great..

Or a girl wearing almost nothing jumping out of a cake whispering it into your ear...

loki99 · Post by **loki99** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 9:39 am

amne wrote:
Simba wrote:an sms would be great..
Or a girl wearing almost nothing jumping out of a cake whispering it into your ear...

r1chardgreen · Post by **r1chardgreen** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:55 am

I agree this update sucked bigtime.

I run apache on several different linux distributions, and none are as hard as gentoo. I know it is trying to allow the seamless integration of it's web application I know, but really they just replaced one crap and confusing system with a slightly tidier version of the same.

What the heck are all those modules loaded for? So anything works? At least one is listed on the apache web site as experimental. I want my web server to run fast and lean so it can serve many cleints, not the fat bloated threads that can make breakfast lunch and dinner.

Mostly I have my config working, but there is some weirdness still with regards to confusion between trailing slashes (handled by mod_dir) and rewriting urls (mod_rewrite). Reading the upgrade guide does not help with this issue.

Apache - you need to understand it anyway, and the Apache way is so much easier. Any admin needs to know their conguration anyway. This just add to the confusion.

Also the comments about admins needing to read the effects of updates - you know, guys, sometimes just you need to do a security upgrade quickly.

I love gentoo for so many reasons - but on this occasion it's a really badly done. Not often I feel the need to vent my spleen in a forum.

What a disappointment.

-Richard
SWiSHzone dot com

macin · Post by **macin** » Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:25 pm

loki99 wrote:But if you have a better idea how to handle something like that, I bet the devs (and me too!) would love to hear about it.

You could have at least linked to the upgrade instructions at the end of the ebuild. If you know what to do it is of course no big deal BUT only if you know it. Sure geeks know what to do or those who read the mailing list or those who administer a http server with 10 vhosts but that's not the usual case. No really it was very annoying.

just my 5cent

Gentoo Apache2 Config Change Idiocy

Gentoo Apache2 Config Change Idiocy

all done

Re: Gentoo Apache2 Config Change Idiocy