bn wrote: > Philip Webb ha scritto: > >> 090812 Alan E. Davis wrote: >> >>> I'm a little reluctant to say this, but it's been a couple of months now >>> since I switched back to Gentoo, and I want to shout out my pleasure >>> that this system has been performing admirably well this time around, >>> in comparison with earlier installations. None of the earlier installations >>> were unacceptable, in fact, Gentoo remained my favorite. I moved to Ubuntu >>> because maintainance of the Gentoo boxes was much more time consuming. >>> >> Yes, that seems to be the usual reason users leave Gentoo: >> like owning a dog, you have to find time to maintain/exercise it. >> > > I am starting to be in trouble using Gentoo for this very reason. Once I > used it on my desktop system, which was OK to be "under repair" once in > a while, since I had my workstation at work. Now I moved abroad and I > only have my laptop to use for all -home and work. If it is hosed, I am > lost (I have the OS X partition but it is basically useless for my job). > > So I am becoming very reluctant in updating critical components -one > example is my kernel, which is basically untouched since I installed, in > late 2007. I know it's counterproductive, because the more I wait, the > worse it is, but it's always a matter of time, and I don't have that > time -not to update per se, which I have, but to face problems in case > critical updates don't go smooth. > > Any advice on this kind of situation? I would rather not buy a "backup > laptop". > > >> However, unlike a dog, you can catch up after a long absence: >> > > Heh, I hope so! > > m. > > >
I do it this way. I keep at least two working kernels in /boot. If I need to, I can edit the grub boot line to boot the old kernel if the new one doesn't work. I do NOT use the make install thing. I do mine manually and name them in my own little way to know what kernel version it is and what version it is locally. It is usually something like bzImage-<kernel version>-<local version>. For local version a simple -1 or -2 works fine. I also copy the .config over with the same name. When I upgrade and get a known good kernel where everything works well, I then do some house cleaning with regard to the older kernels. As mentioned earlier, I keep at least two working kernels, the one I am using and a backup. Looks something like this: r...@smoker / # ls -al /boot/bzImage-2.6.2* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2460088 Jan 2 2009 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-7 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2463768 Apr 16 17:10 /boot/bzImage-2.6.23-r8-8 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2370876 May 27 11:01 /boot/bzImage-2.6.25-r9-4 r...@smoker / # The config files look similar as well. As far as packages, just use the buildpkg in make.conf and then you have a binary backup that can be restored in just a few minutes for even a large package. Backups are also nice. Just in case. Dale :-) :-)
