Bug 37257 – Add optional instructions for downloading a Portage snapshot from a mirror

• Product: [OLD] Docs-user
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Zack 2004-01-04 17:21:53 UTC]

The referenced page contains instructions for extracting a Portage snapshot tarball from the LiveCD, under the heading "Installing a Portage Snapshot and Source Code". However, this snapshot is extremely outdated; the one used in the example is from Oct 2003, and the one on the LiveCD I'm using (pentium3-1.4-20030911-cd1.iso) is even older. When the user is later instructed to "emerge sync", their Portage tree will be so old that updating it via rsync will take very long.

Since most (all?) Gentoo mirrors offer current snapshots of the Portage tree in tarball form, I propose adding instructions on how to download a more current snapshot from a mirror. This will reduce load on the rsync mirrors because they will be used only by installed users for minor, day-to-day updates, rather than being used during installs to update almost all of the Portage tree. This will also be faster for users who are installing, as downloading a ~13MB tarball and extracting it is much faster than using rsync to update the same data.

[Comment 1 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2004-01-05 00:10:12 UTC]

The reason we inform the users to use the Portage snapshot from the CD is in case the user wants a no-network installation (and/or GRP installation). As GRP is based on a particular snapshot, updating the Portage tree would introduce issues with GRP.

To download a snapshot through HTTP, the user should use "emerge-webrsync" which will download and install a Portage snapshot from the web (instead of using rsync).

I disagree though with the speed issue: before the "emerge sync" step the user is informed on how to setup Portage to use mirrors. By selecting a fast mirror, "emerge sync" and "emerge-webrsync" are both fast.

Anyhow we will add "emerge-webrsync" to chapter 6 in the subsection on "Optional: Updating Portage".

[Comment 2 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) 2004-02-07 11:07:22 UTC]

I've updated the instructions to inform the user about "emerge-webrsync". I've kept it as a second-choice (in case rsync doesn't work) though as "emerge sync" really is the most preferred method.