Hi Einar

> Oliver: I am somewhat amazed that your setup works. I would think
> Portage would get very upset, or at least confused, when packages that
> aren't marked as updated are, dependencies should be broken etc. But two
> years running is quite stable. Is it just /var and parts of /etc that
> are externally mounted, while /usr, /lib etc. are all shared?

Its a bit tricky - I will sketch the setup for you:

I have a template /vservers/template - that is a full blown gentoo
installation for vservers. When I do updates, I do them by chroot'ing to
this dir - NOT by entering a vserver!
This way the portage and the dependency database (stored in /var/) get
updated.

In the vserver guests fstab, I mount the "per guest" partition to /disk
and overlay some bind-mounts for /var and some of the /etc directories
(not the whole one!). For easy setups its also ok to make symlinks from
/etc to the var partition
The only thing you must take care of, are updates that change the
config-files syntax. It should be obious that files on the per-guest
config system (the cut-out parts of /etc and perhaps things in /var) are
not updated. I use this setup for Webservers mainly, they are nearly
equal so I just have a differing config for /etc/apache2, all network
and hostname stuff ist done from outside.

If you have any questions dont mind to ask

Oli
-- 
Protect your environment -  close windows and adopt a penguin!
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