Keeping gentoo system in top shape is of vital importance for every user and should be done properly from the very beginning. I don't consider the current state of the documentation treating this topic satisfactory. It resembles rather a philosophical tractate with million of ways how to possibly solve various problems that can arise while attempting to keeping the system in proper state. I suggest a guide in the following style would be written instead, specially covering keeping the system in shape: 1) Check if X and if not, perform magic operation Z from chapter Y 2) spit three times on the screen 3) if you are gay, then issue emerge --i-am-gay 4) if today is thursday, goto step (6) 5) emerge barfoo 6) check that version of toad is greater than version of stool 7) if you father's name is Terry, do /etc/portage/update.d --config --father-name Terry 8) do ifconfig eth0 and write down 4th digit on the 2nd row of the ouput 9) do emerge --deep --throat --blow --job --always --really --purge --seriously --update --whole-system --i-mean-it-seriously --im-not-joking 10) if you get conflict, run resolve-conflict --revdep-reconf N, where N is the next prime higher than the version of the application that caused the conflict and go back to (9) 11) run revdep-reconf --safe-sex --no-masturbation --perversions=off 12) if your CPU starts smoking, perform etc-update --all-packages and retry from the step (5) 13) perform etc-update /etc/resolv.conf --digit=M, where M is the digit written down in step (8). Such a guide should be performable without thinking and actually written as a program for CPU=human, programming language=english. Otherwise novice users that don't understand gentoo properly or people who don't have time to study the manuals will fuck up their systems at the very beginning. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Determine where keeping system in top shape is described 2.Try to put your system in top shape 3. Actual Results: Brain arrest Expected Results: Guide through trained-monkey-simple steps by which the user doesn't need to do actions more complicated that comparison of two strings on the screen or paper ;-) Red hat or has a magic one-shot update button. I don't want gentoo to be this lame, but I don't want to feel myself like performing exam from data structures when trying to update my system. Portage 2.0.51.22-r2 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.3.5-20050130, glibc-2.3.5- r0, 2.6.11-gentoo-r9 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.11-gentoo-r9 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.11 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.5 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r10 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.18-r1 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium3 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share /config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kd e/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/default s/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips /config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config / /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium3 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/ distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr crypt cups curl emboss enco de esd fam foomaticdb fortran gd gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 guile ima gemagick imap imlib ipv6 jack java jpeg kde ldap libg++ libwww mad mikmod mng mo tif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline ruby samba sdl slang spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex theora tiff tls truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts vorbis xine xml2 xmms xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
this request is kind of vague at best what are you looking for exactly ? some mini guide to hold a users hand in getting the bare min done with portage ?
a general maintenence guide would be really fun to write. i volunteer if the doc is wanted on that note, it sounds like a good idea to me. things like portage maintenence (--prune, --depclean, etc), clearing out useless files (/var/tmp/portage/* anyone?), disk maintenence...
Assuming this is rather meant as a joke than an actual bugreport, i'd suggest posting it on the forums. Stuff like that is always welcome in the Gentoo Chat and OTW forums and keeps bugzilla clean. ;)
If someone wants to write a general maintenance guide, that's fine, but make sure to put your asbestos suit on because maintaining a system differs from sysadmin to sysadmin. Plain users would run emerge --sync, emerge -uDN world, dispatch-conf and let the rest be. And if you want to put that in a separate guide, I'll smack you on the head with Xavier's catfish because this is already in the Gentoo Handbook, which seeing from #gentoo's traffic nobody reads anyway.
