On Thursday, 25 February 2021 15:42:38 GMT Grant Taylor wrote: > On 2/25/21 2:51 AM, Michael wrote:
> > A reinstall in this context is not a wholesale replace. > > ~blink~ > > > It implies obtaining the latest Stage 3 archive from a mirror, > > but retaining part of your current installation. Your /home, /etc, > > /var/lib/portage/world, plus any databases e.g. in /var/lib/mysql/ > > and your kernel config will be retained from your existing system and > > will not be replaced. Back these up first along with any particular > > customizations you have made, before you untar Stage 3, so you can > > restore them. > > Ah. You seem to be talking about what I would call an "in place > upgrade" for Windows. As in stalling n over top of n-1 or n-2. That's > definitely less disruptive than I was thinking. I was thinking that > fdisk and / or mkfs would be involved. Yes, it is an "in place upgrade", but bottom up. You upgrade the filesystem to the latest OS image, then drop in your own existing settings/configuration and finally run a system/kernel update. Unless you want to change your partitions you won't need to use fdisk. mkfs is advisable, it will clear out any old cruft and address any changes to the default system directories - e.g. where $PORTDIR, $DISTDIR may be in the latest Stage 3. A quick diff between your backup of make.conf and repos.conf against the new Stage 3 archive contents will inform you of changes to default settings. > > Then rsync portage, update all your @world packages and build a new > > kernel (make oldconfig). Spend some time merging existing application > > config files with etc-update to make them compatible with the latest > > versions of these packages, reboot and hopefully that should be all > > there is to it. > > I may end up /needing/ to go that route. For the moment, I'm going to > try the incremental updates. > > > Yes, it would have been, but what is the benefit of updating multiple > > packages many times over, instead of doing it just once? > > In some ways, this is a learning experience. As in it's a proof of concept. Yes, nowt wrong with that and a sound reason to try it out. In this case, time spent and any problem solving would be an investment in learning. > The computer in question spends 2/3 of it's life doing nothing but > idling a few programs. So, it spending time compiling and producing > heat is not a bad thing in this case. Especially when there's 10" of > snow on the ground. ;-) Neil highlighted the use case of a server/system which can't afford interruptions. I'd still reinstall as explained above, but do it offline, test, backup, and then untar over the live filesystem to keep downtime to a minimum.
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