Maintain Gentoo on multiple boxes

[drakebasher]

I have recently installed Gentoo on one of my 3 systems. I did a stage 1 with dial-up access, so it took a little while. I'd like eventually to install Gentoo on my other 2 systems: my server and my main workstation. I'd like to know how I should arrange things to make things easy for maintenance of downloaded sources and the portage tree.

I've copied the files from /usr/portage from my working Gentoo to my server: is that all of the source code (other than packages I haven't yet downloaded) that I need for my local "mirror"?

If I edit /etc/make.conf and add the path to my local server:/directory into the GENTOO_MIRRORS parameter, will that cause emerge to check there before downloading from the internet (I assume the mirrors are checked in order they are listed?)?

This has probably been done before... Is there a HOWTO somewhere that might give further detail?

Thanks-

[genesus]

you could try this howto http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/rsync.xml and modify it a little for your own purposes, I've been thinking about doing this myself, when I get a new server...when you get it up, maybe you could post a tutorial here

[dylunio]

I don't know if this will help: http://www.linuxforums.org/tutorials...ial-13763.html

[loft306]

you could try this howto http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/rsync.xml and modify it a little for your own purposes, I've been thinking about doing this myself, when I get a new server...when you get it up, maybe you could post a tutorial here

i have been running my own rsync server for 2 years and it is great 5 boxen synr's off of the server... and 90% of my pkgs on all boxen are the same so i also emerge from that same server and for the other 10% i simply wget the packages or emerge -f them on the main server but not install them there so that ther update as needed

[drakebasher]

Great linkage, guys: thanks alot. Looks like exactly what I need.

[RiverRat]

Just use NFS to share /usr/portage. That has all the goodies that are NOT arch specific. The machine specific is in var/lib/portage and each machine should have its own copy of that. As for securely doing this with NFS on a firewall:
1. Ins the NFS kernel module
2. Start RPC and nfsd
3. Mount fileserver:/usr/portage /usr/portage
4. Perform whatever update steps are necessary.
4. Unmount drive, stop nfsd and rpcd services, remove the kernel module.

[drakebasher]

That sounds pretty simple, RiverRat and I've been thinking about something similar. I've read Gentoo's manual on setting up a local rsync mirror. It shows how to edit /etc/rsyncd.conf to share the portage tree, but it shows the last line as 'exclude=distfiles/ packages/'. If it is safe to share the /distfiles/ and /packages/ directories, why would they recommend to "exclude" them? I'd like to share them if it is safe, to minimize duplicate downloading on my dial-up connection.

Thanks~