Neil Bothwick wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 05:48:32 -0800 (PST), BRM wrote:
If the machine is not fast enough - mine is a PII 233 w/160 MB RAM,
takes a while do to updates - then you really have to separate out what
you are hosting from what you are using. Otherwise you end up in the
situation that you have started one system update (or software
install), have a build failure for whatever reason, and then can't
complete the same one due to changes in the local copy of portage.
You can still use emerge -sync instead of a home brewed script. In make
conf, set SYNC to localhost, then in your cron job, do
SYNC="some gentoo rsync mirror" emerge --sync
So, even if your system fell into the first situation - where it is
fast enough
- then I would still recommend doing the little extra to run as the
second situation. It's just far easier to maintain.
I've been using a single portage tree to serve a LAN and for use by the
host for years with no hint of any of the problems you suggest. I just
make sure the cron job on the server syncs earlier than the rest of the
LAN and everything is up to date.
I used to have four computers a good while back. Back then, I synced my
main rig then synced the others off it. This was several years ago. I
don't use a cron job or anything to do this, just some old fashioned
typing. I don't recall ever having trouble with it syncing to my main
rig. Did I mention it was a very old Compaq 200MHz CPU machine with a
whopping 128MBs of ram? Thing looks like a filing cabinet.
To me, it seems the OP is making something complicated when it is just
not needed. If you want to use cron jobs, set the main rig to sync a
hour before the others would be set to sync against it. If the rig that
syncs to Gentoo servers is to slow, set them two hours apart. From my
understanding, you get the same tree all the way around.
Giving some more thought, I once put /usr/portage on nfs. I sync once
and all the systems used the same copy of the tree. The other way
worked out to be easier tho. I seem to recall the need for running
emerge --metadata too. That took a while on the old Compaq. lol
Dale
:-) :-)
