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Aron Griffis wrote:
> I have worked in the enterprise
> UNIX market for 6 years. My code is running in places like NASA
> mission control, 9-1-1 call centers, and most of the telephone
> carriers. I've produced patches on weekends to close $800m deals.

Wow.


> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
> distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.
>
> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
> of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
> me. We're over here having fun.

I couldn't agree more. World domination doesn't really excite me in the
least. All that matters to me is that I've got a distro that I enjoy
using and working on. In fact, it seems to me that many of the things I
dislike about other OS's and other distros are the result of some drive
towards an idiot-proof, user friendly, "enterprise" product. I very much
want to preserve gentoo as it is.

Thats certaintly not to say that I'm against progress, but if people
want support contracts, the absolute ultimate in stability, and install
CD's shipped in pretty boxes with manuals, there are other distros
available for them.

- --Colin
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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:

<snip>

> In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
> testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
> never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
> of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

I tend to agree with most of those problems you mention. I've tried to
think of ways to make Gentoo fit more into an enterprise market ... its
not that easy.

* We'd need a tree that isn't 'live' per say, something that has a
lifecycle and only includes security/criticial software bug updates
* We'd need a full staffed QA/testing/tenderbox crew to do make it
truely 'stable'
* We'd need to have a better way to backport fixes
* We could never probably offer support contracts, but that doesn't mean
someone in the private world could do it.
* Access to drivers/hardware would be a major problem that would be hard
to solve without corporate funding.

> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

I'd say as a global goal, yes I'd agree with you. Gentoo as a global
entity should stay where its at, but that doesn't mean a subset of
Gentoo could have a goal towards being enterprise. I don't really see
Gentoo has a hobbyist distribution as a whole. I know a majority of our
folks use Gentoo as a development OS which is great and it works
perfectly for that, but I can see Gentoo working into a more enterprise
environment with some work. I know several folks that run Gentoo in a
production server environment and it runs well! Doesn't mean its easy to
maintain, but it is doable and I see some very benifical situations
where Gentoo would work best in production systems.

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
> distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

I envision the 'server/enterprise' project to help create numerous tools
that help aide Gentoo in a production environment. There's a lot of cool
stuff we could do to help make it run better in that type of
environment.

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I see your point there, but I also think theres a group of people that
also like gentoo in the enterprise realm. I remember at the last LWE
show in San Francisco, there were numerous people asking about Gentoo
and making it more 'stable'. This would really be tied to an enterprise
level of Gentoo. So I know there is interest out there. We all have
opinions on were Gentoo should fit in, so I don't see why we couldn't
fit there.

To sum it up, to make Gentoo better in the enterprise isn't a bad goal
for some of us. It'd be a bad goal for Gentoo globally though. Take a
look at the hardened project for example. They've shown a good userbase
that likes how it works and the tools with it. I for see something
simliar happening to an enterprise sub-project (or whatever you'd call
it). Heck, maybe this idea would be better fit as a fork, who knows.
Would be neat to have a group of people working on this and helping
Gentoo if they find bugs in the process and fix them!

Anyways, you made some great points on where we fall, but I don't think
we should shoot down the idea or potential because some of us don't
think it'd work.

Cheers!

--
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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On Monday 06 June 2005 16:55, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

I've always felt Gentoo is better as a base or platform. There's certainly
enough power in the tools we provide for anyone to roll something
"enterprise" based upon our work. Or for any other purpose, including
binary-only.

Much in the same way as there are numerous distros that ARE Debian --
derived from and cooperative with, but not separate from.

People could always try to fork, too, but many of us know how well that
went for people who have tried...

Cheers,

--
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

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Dylan Carlson wrote:
> On Monday 06 June 2005 16:55, Aron Griffis wrote:
>
>>I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
>>is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
>>doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
>>goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
>>think we should be aiming for corporate America.
>
>
> I've always felt Gentoo is better as a base or platform. There's certainly
> enough power in the tools we provide for anyone to roll something
> "enterprise" based upon our work. Or for any other purpose, including
> binary-only.
There is power in Gentoo, the way you set things up, the choice
provided, the overall goal of Gentoo. There is not power in our tools.
Our tools are in fact underpowered IMHO. Thats one of the areas where
I think work is really needed, and a lot of what I want to work on is
portage-related tools. Much of this requires new portage API's which
are in progress but take a lot of work.

There is an installer project that will in principle facilitate large
scale Gentoo deployments, there is a GLEP for a stable tree, there is
hardened, and all of those are great.

>
> Much in the same way as there are numerous distros that ARE Debian --
> derived from and cooperative with, but not separate from.
>
> People could always try to fork, too, but many of us know how well that
> went for people who have tried...
>
Much better to be a meta meta distro such as Ubuntu that runs off of a
core gentoo install than to fork stuff, especially at present.

> Cheers,
>

I think in the end, Gentoo is too much a dynamic entity to be used for
a stable enterprise rollout. You would need something debianesque with
releases, or a Gentoo Snapshot ( say 2005.0 with bugfixes/security ). I
wonder at the allocation of things ( say the mySQL profile ) and when
things like that stay on Gentoo-owned hardware, vs. something like
breakmygentoo which is 3rd party. However I have faith that the
managers will enforce whatever is decided.

The whole point of this Open Source stuff anyway is to adapt things
however you need them, and Enterprise or not everyone has that option.

- -Ajec

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On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
> testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
> never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
> of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

I don't feel that the list of requirements you have for "enterprise"
linux is necessarily what the enterprise needs..

I think Gentoo has some steps that can be taken to be a better
enterprise player, but to come out and state that it won't work is a bit
bold. It might not work for HP's description of "enterprise", but that
doesn't mean it wouldn't work for someone else. I have talked with
people who have used Gentoo in HPC clusters with great success, and I
would consider that an enterprise arena.

> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

Wow... as a sysadmin who has run Gentoo in some very high profile
production systems that's a bit offensive to think I used it outside of
a hobbyist platform.. IBM didn't just donate a $30k system for ppc64
development to make it better for someone's basement use, so I don't
think I'm alone in thinking that Gentoo is above "hobbyist".

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
> distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

Let other distros go there at $1500/year/node (RHEL AS)...

Gentoo is already a fun distribution.. I don't think that has to change
to meet enterprise goals.

> If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
> of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
> me. We're over here having fun.

Personally, I was drawn to Gentoo by the community, which was a lot of
fun. I still have fun working with the people in this community. I
don't see why an enterprise goal should be equated with losing the fun
aspect of Gentoo.

Cheers,

-Corey

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

My $.02 after reading a lot of discussions on the CentOS (ie free
REHL4) list is this:

1. Many Enterprise users are looking for an SLA, ie someone who will
guarantee to fix anything that breaks in a specified period of time.
Such users have the big bucks to pay for such a guarantee. I'm sure
that Gentoo will not be in a position to provide this, but some
enterprising group might want to undertake this.

2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
the most part!

Not to say that Gentoo has no place in a production environment, but
my company would never use anything without an SLA, ie not even CentOS
which mirrors REHL faithfully.

--
Collins
Head teachers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but
the Start button.

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Monday 06 June 2005 19:45, Collins Richey wrote:
> 2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
> latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
> that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
> with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
> much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
> developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
> the most part!

"Feature creep" is largely a problem upstream, not with package
maintainers. And no, we're not gonna backport anything. If people really
believe that backporting fixes = stable and/or secure, let them use RH.
It's a belief, nothing more.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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On Monday 06 June 2005 11:29 pm, Dylan Carlson wrote:
> On Monday 06 June 2005 19:45, Collins Richey wrote:
> > 2. Enterprise users (as a general rule) are not interested in the
> > latest and greatest but rather in a stable, reasonably current system
> > that can remain in place (with guaranteed security fixes, of course)
> > with no "feature creep" for a few years. Even Gentoo stable is too
> > much of a moving target for such users. The user base (engineers
> > developing embedded Linux) I support is still well served by RH9 for
> > the most part!
>
> "Feature creep" is largely a problem upstream, not with package
> maintainers. And no, we're not gonna backport anything. If people really
> believe that backporting fixes = stable and/or secure, let them use RH.
> It's a belief, nothing more.

you really cant make that kind of general statement and expect it to hold ...
often times there are packages where newer versions suck more than previous
ones (the way in which they suck i leave up to your imagination) ...
security/stable minded people are often served best by ripping out the small
fixes for the current 'most stable' version

and i'm talking bugfixes here, not feature backports like redhat is known
for ... these are two very different things afterall
-mike
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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Monday 06 June 2005 20:36, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> you really cant make that kind of general statement and expect it to
> hold ... often times there are packages where newer versions suck more
> than previous ones (the way in which they suck i leave up to your
> imagination) ... security/stable minded people are often served best by
> ripping out the small fixes for the current 'most stable' version

Sure, but I'd say the instances where that is truly necessary is rare...
given the # of packages we deal with. Regardless of whatever QA we have
or RH has, every "enterprise" organization has to do their own tests
before they deploy new software. Backported fixes occasionally cause
problems. In the end, RH has very little liability if a customer
experiences downtime. If someone blindly deploys updates from any vendor
and has downtime, they only have themselves to blame.

I'll leave that to each respective package maintainer what's best. Setting
a policy either way seems like a mistake. When people say that
"enterprise" environments have these requirements (backporting fixes, et
al), they're really talking about another distro, not Gentoo. A separate
organization that uses Gentoo as a base, which would be great and the
right way to go about it...

If we stay flexible enough, people can get what they want out of Gentoo,
even if it's not specifically tailored for either enterprise or home
desktop environments.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@gentoo.org]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F
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On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
> of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
> me. We're over here having fun.

I second this. That's why I joined...

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Heh, I like this too.

One thing that people might want to remember, if Gentoo ever changes
into a "real, we take your money for support" type of distro, a lot of
the employers of the us developers might reconsider allowing them to
participate. Which would pretty much suck...

Aron, thanks for writing this up, I enjoyed it.

thanks,

greg k-h

p.s. And yes, Gentoo is used for a "base" distro all over the place, and
that's great. Lots of embedded people like it, and even the nitwits at
OSDL are using it for their "Linux Reference Platform" or whatever they
are calling it these days...
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

I'm not a developer, but I'm a Gentoo bigot and I'd like to join the
discussion :).

Aron Griffis wrote:

>
>In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
>enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
>testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
>We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
>backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
>update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
>never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
>of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
>external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
>for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
>the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
>
>
Another thing worthy of mention here is that Gentoo is a non-profit
organization, with some rather tight restrictions imposed by US tax laws.

>I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
>is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
>doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
>goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
>think we should be aiming for corporate America.
>
>
You aren't -- trust me. You're not on corporate America's radar screen.
I'm not sure SuSE or Novell is either. Corporate America lives, breathes
and eats Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

>I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
>distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
>dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
>they can tailor and work on easily.
>
>
Gentoo is running in my home. And it's running in a *lot* of laboratories.

>I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
>environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
>walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
>cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
>If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
>of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
>me. We're over here having fun.
>
>
>
It's also fine with the GPL :). I'm not sure I care about alternative
arches, given Apple's announcement today. In case you didn't hear,
they're migrating to Intel processors for Macs, starting as soon as next
year on the Mini-Mac. I've got a Zaurus; it's running some kind of Linux
and I'll probably put Gentoo on it when I get some spare cycles,
provided Gentoo runs on the 6000. But I'm sure as hell not gonna try to
run R or TeXmacs or Maxima on it!

>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
>users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
>It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
>than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
>because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
>enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
>Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
>improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
>developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
>the users second.
>
>
Well ... OK ... I'll never become a developer; I just have too many
hobbies to pin myself down that tightly with what little free time I
have. I think you're right, though ... Gentoo *is* for the developers.
Ultimately, though, so is GNU/Linux. It's an enviroment of the
programmers, by the programmers, and for the programmers, to paraphrase
Abe Lincoln.

I'm certainly not in this to try and take money away from Bill Gates, or
to torture intellectual property attorneys. I'm in this because I like
the tools, I use the tools, I've been using similar tools for 20 years,
and I'm fortunate enough to have a day job where I spend at least a good
chunk of the time working with Linux.

So ... since nobody has asked ... why Gentoo? Well, I started out in
Linux with Red Hat 6.2, stayed with them through Red Hat 9. When they
created Fedora, I went to Debian. If Debian had the level of support for
Java that Gentoo has, I'd probably still be there. But it doesn't, so I
switched. The rest of Gentoo's joys just grew on me. :)

The best thing for me about Gentoo is that it's almost trivial to
package software. If you can download it, follow directions, and install
it, you're 90 percent of the way to packaging it! I was in a discussion
on the R developers mailing list the other day about package management.
They, like Perl, have their own source repository, dependency tree, etc.
It struck me that it would probably take less than a week to create
"/usr/portage/app-sci-CRAN" -- CRAN is the Comprehensive R Archive
Network -- and populate it with 500-odd R packages, complete with R
package dependencies *and* dependencies on underlying Linux packages,
something they don't seem to have now.
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On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 21:51 -0700, Greg KH wrote:

> One thing that people might want to remember, if Gentoo ever changes
> into a "real, we take your money for support" type of distro, a lot of
> the employers of the us developers might reconsider allowing them to
> participate. Which would pretty much suck...

Oh, I'd never want to see Gentoo become like that! But that doesn't mean
we can attempt to make a sub-project to make things at least better for
the enterprise folks. Whether that be creating tools to help management
multiple Gentoo machines, or dealing with a more 'stable' branch. I'm
not saying we'll ever achieve a level of where RHEL is, but we can at
least make it more manageable for folks. I know that won't help
companies that require a service agreement since we as Gentoo will never
be able to do that.

I get the sense that when people hear 'enterprise' they think we want to
take Gentoo to becoming a corporate monster like RH. I pray and hope
that never happens. All I'd like to see is a sub-project devoted to
Gentoo in the enterprise. It'd sit in a similar role as Hardened Gentoo
does providing tools, etc for folks in the enterprise.

Let the people who want to use Gentoo as a 'hobbist' distro use it like
that, and let the people that want to use it in the enterprise use it as
that.

Btw, I'm hoping to get this said sub-project going once I get settled in
with my move and new job. At least get some organization sorted with it.

--
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

>I've got a Zaurus; it's running some kind of Linux
>and I'll probably put Gentoo on it when I get some spare cycles,
>provided Gentoo runs on the 6000. But I'm sure as hell not gonna try to
>run R or TeXmacs or Maxima on it!
>
>
>
Dang -- I just remembered -- I *am* running Maxima on the Zaurus.
There's a package of it, and I've got it. :)
--
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On Jun 6, 2005, at 4:55 PM, Aron Griffis wrote:

> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow... Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.


overlay capabilities are understated.

The use of USE flags might someday emerge overlays which open up the
gateway to ricer heaven for one group while an entirely seperate
group does in fact bolt down RHEL analogs in function and process.

Does the growth of metadata processing overhead exceed moore's law?


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Aron Griffis wrote:

> But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Amen

lu

--

Luca Barbato

Gentoo/linux Developer Gentoo/PPC Operational Leader
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Note: I've snipped a lot of quoted text below, but took full context
into account in my replies...

Lance Albertson wrote:[Mon Jun 06 2005, 09:02:21PM EDT]
> I'd say as a global goal, yes I'd agree with you. Gentoo as a global
> entity should stay where its at, but that doesn't mean a subset of
> Gentoo could have a goal towards being enterprise.

I think that working on methods to use Gentoo in an enterprise setting
is cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how people creatively solve
some of the problems I mentioned without disrupting Gentoo's core
development. I did not mean to imply that *all* of those problems
need to be solved in order for Gentoo to be usable in an enterprise
setting.

> I don't really see Gentoo has a hobbyist distribution as a whole.

Sorry if it seemed like I was putting Gentoo in a box. That wasn't my
intent. I wasn't using the term "hobbyist" derogatorily, in case that
wasn't clear.

> I envision the 'server/enterprise' project to help create numerous
> tools that help aide Gentoo in a production environment. There's
> a lot of cool stuff we could do to help make it run better in that
> type of environment.

Totally. In fact, some of the same tools that would help enterprise
users would also be useful to ordinary users.

> > And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first, the users
> > second.
>
> I see your point there, but I also think theres a group of people
> that also like gentoo in the enterprise realm. I remember at the
> last LWE show in San Francisco, there were numerous people asking
> about Gentoo and making it more 'stable'. This would really be tied
> to an enterprise level of Gentoo. So I know there is interest out
> there. We all have opinions on were Gentoo should fit in, so I don't
> see why we couldn't fit there.

If there are users wanting that, then I look forward to seeing them
step up to the plate and help to solve the problems. I'd reiterate,
though, that the solutions need to be creative enough that they don't
disrupt Gentoo's core development.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example: multilib support.
Jeremy and others have been working on this for a while now. They've
gone through a couple iterations of efforts, but take a look at
Jeremy's blog and you'll see that he acknowledges it needs some
reworking. Despite that, the default amd64 profile is multilib, and
there is no higher indication of stability in portage than that.

How should the enterprise subproject approach this problem? Options:
(1) They could raise a fuss that Jeremy has taken amd64 down this path
before the technology was ready. After all, that makes a mess of
enterprise-readiness, because any consumer is going to need to migrate
to the next multilib attempt in the future. (2) They could continue
to rely on the non-multilib profile and wait for the multilib
implementation to stabilize into something that isn't going to keep
seeing big changes.

IMHO the best approach is (2). It leaves the default amd64 profile
multilib, which is fine for most users. It is more work for the
enterprise subproject, but allows Jeremy to continue his development
unhindered.

Disclaimer: I don't know that much about multilib or the current state
of its development. If I've mischaracterized it, I apologize in
advance. My intent was to present a possible scenario and explain my
reasoning why I hope nobody will try to retarget the core of Gentoo
development at the enterprise.

> Anyways, you made some great points on where we fall, but I don't
> think we should shoot down the idea or potential because some of us
> don't think it'd work.

I agree with you.

Corey Shields wrote:[Mon Jun 06 2005, 10:18:31PM EDT]
> I don't feel that the list of requirements you have for "enterprise"
> linux is necessarily what the enterprise needs..
>
> I think Gentoo has some steps that can be taken to be a better
> enterprise player, but to come out and state that it won't work is
> a bit bold.

Ah, sorry, that isn't quite what I meant. Rather I intended to point
out that we should not be deluded into thinking that the changes
required for Gentoo to be enterprise-ready are small. Some of the
changes are surmountable, but each one could appear to necessitate,
IMHO, a change at the core of Gentoo development. I would prefer for
the solutions to be possible more transparently.

For example, one way a company could presently deploy Gentoo
internally would be to (1) make a snapshot of the portage tree and
deploy based on that, (2) manually backport bug- and security-fixes to
their snapshot. Sometimes the manual backport would be easy,
sometimes it would be more difficult, and sometimes the decision would
be made to move forward on a given package version.

In other words, a company can implement a Gentoo product lifecycle
as a wrapper around the existing Gentoo development process. It is
a lot of work for the company, and they'd better hire some bright
sysadmins, but it would be possible.

If there is an enterprise subproject formed in Gentoo, I'd like to see
their methods be similar. Develop tools that make it easier to manage
and maintain an enterprise deployment, without changing how Gentoo is
currently developed. Without hoisting new expectations on the Gentoo
developers, release process, etc.

> Wow... as a sysadmin who has run Gentoo in some very high profile
> production systems that's a bit offensive to think I used it outside
> of a hobbyist platform.. IBM didn't just donate a $30k system for
> ppc64 development to make it better for someone's basement use, so
> I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Gentoo is above "hobbyist".

I did not intend "hobbyist" to be disparaging. I think that the big
companies (including HP, who has also donated tens of thousands of
dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of potential in Gentoo.

> Gentoo is already a fun distribution.. I don't think that has to
> change to meet enterprise goals.

Great! I think we are closer in our perspectives than it seems.

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

Hi,

Aron Griffis wrote:
> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

I don't think we're a good base for enterprise distributions with our
current tree either.

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people. Let other
> distros go there! I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc. Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

As you stated before, many of the enterprise goals may also fit the
"hobbyist"'s ones. I'm running Gentoo on my Pentium-MMX for server
pourposes and I really would benefit from a slower moving tree, for example.

> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.

Ack. Additionally, I like the idea of running Gentoo on a server. ;)

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.

Depends on which side you are. When I was a user, I always had the
feeling that Gentoo exists for me, since it doesn't force me to
something I don't want, I can decide what my system looks like.
Now that I became a developer I see Gentoo as a great opportunity to
expand my knowlege and experience and to meet nice people, so it's
primarily for me.

> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I agree with this, but there are also situations where that isn't really
true. For example, I'm really interested in getting a true multilib
environment for AMD64, not because I want to run 32bit apps -- the few
ones I need already run smoothly -- but because it's an interesting and
ambitious project. For those who want to decide whether they want 32bit
or 64bit on a per-package-basis, multilib exists for them. To me,
multilib exists for me.

Although it's nearly everywhere the case, there doesn't have to be a
conflict of interests per-se. Gentoo has managed to not run into these
troubles, and that's why it's such a great distribution and community.

Greetings,

blubb

--
Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Operational Co-Lead
blubb@gentoo.org
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 11:08 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> Ah, sorry, that isn't quite what I meant. Rather I intended to point
> out that we should not be deluded into thinking that the changes
> required for Gentoo to be enterprise-ready are small. Some of the
> changes are surmountable, but each one could appear to necessitate,
> IMHO, a change at the core of Gentoo development. I would prefer for
> the solutions to be possible more transparently.

Yeah, the changes that do need to be made are not small I agree. I do
feel that for the most part they could be made without disrupting the
core of Gentoo. For example, there is no need to put a freeze on the
whole tree in the name of "enterprise stability" and screw everyone else
wanting bleeding edge packages, when you could snapshot the tree (like
you mention below)

> For example, one way a company could presently deploy Gentoo
<snip>
> In other words, a company can implement a Gentoo product lifecycle
> as a wrapper around the existing Gentoo development process. It is
> a lot of work for the company, and they'd better hire some bright
> sysadmins, but it would be possible.
>
> If there is an enterprise subproject formed in Gentoo, I'd like to see
> their methods be similar. Develop tools that make it easier to manage
> and maintain an enterprise deployment, without changing how Gentoo is
> currently developed. Without hoisting new expectations on the Gentoo
> developers, release process, etc.

GLEP 19 is pretty much right along these lines, and already has some
prototype/testing going on. :)

> I did not intend "hobbyist" to be disparaging. I think that the big
> companies (including HP, who has also donated tens of thousands of
> dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of potential in Gentoo.

Cool. I probably put too much personal feeling behind it. I don't
trust corporate distros anymore. I was in a situation where we got
royally screwed by RedHat, tried to work out a deal with them, and had
no luck. For us we got stuck in the whole "first one is free, then
you're hooked" game.

I'm not against paying for support and services (I think rhn is the
coolest thing since sliced bread, and worth some money), however, I do
not think that their prices are reasonable, especially when they ask you
to switch from free to paying six digits in the middle of a fiscal year
where you haven't budgeted for it. So, my desires for Gentoo to fit
better in the enterprise stem from not wanting to stick with a corporate
distro.. Kinda selfish, I know. :)

> Great! I think we are closer in our perspectives than it seems.

:)

Cheers,

-Corey

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Aron Griffis wrote:[Tue Jun 07 2005, 11:08:58AM EDT]
> I think that the big companies (including HP, who has also donated
> tens of thousands of dollars of equipment btw) see a lot of
> potential in Gentoo.

Btw, as an hp employee I hope you'll forgive me for tooting the hp
horn a little bit... I know there are other companies donating
resources and I'm not trying to one-up them.

In addition to the equipment hp has lent, part of my job description
is to "work on Gentoo". No strings attached, no agenda. This is
viewed as positive community involvement by the hp Open Source and
Linux Org.

I spend *at least* 1/3 of my time working on Gentoo. Without getting
into a salary discussion, that's hp donating tens of thousands of
dollars per year.

Now whether you all consider my involvement to be worth that much is
a different matter, of course. No comments from the peanut gallery,
please. ;-)

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

Hello,

A user wrote to me personally:
> i thought several times if i wanted to reply at all, and after
> i wrote my mail if i really should send it out. I finally decided to
> send it off list since this might just end up in flames on the list.

I hope you don't mind I'm putting this back on the list. If you are
concerned, then there are probably others in the same boat. Hopefully
my response below will ease their concerns as well as yours.

> So here it is:
>
> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> > users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> > It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> > than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> > because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> > enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> > Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> > improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> > developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> > the users second.
>
> Sheesh, i really don't know what to say. I really don't have
> a problem with developers having fun by doing their work, but
> a linux _distribution_ is probably one things intended most directly
> at users. I've been a user for a long time, and i always tried to
> give something back by filing bug reports or helping other users.
> I had the feeling my contribution was welcome and i never wanted to
> leech the guys doing development off. As for today, i can say pretty
> sure i've given quite an amount of time (and even some money) to
> Gentoo. I've had my share of fun with it, but seeing you dividing
> people involved in Gentoo into developers (good, have fun, their
> playground) and users (bad, but we'll have to live with them) really
> makes me speechless. Gentoo should be there for everyone
> disregarding if he's developer or not. If you don't like that, turn
> of the rsync mirrors and let only devs check out the tree. ;-)
>
> Maybe i've just gotten your statement really wrong, but as far
> i understand it, i really have a bad feeling about it.

I entirely see your point, and I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong
impression. I really appreciate your contributions, and I take pride
in helping to fix bugs that affect you and other users. I think it's
great that Gentoo is a distribution that has such a welcoming
reputation.

My point was not that I don't care about users. It was that the
developers working on Gentoo are ultimately here because it's a fun
project. We decide our own priorities, and none of us is completely
self-sacrificial. The areas that see real improvement are the areas
that are interesting to the developers. This is a contrast from the
commercial distributions, which see improvement in the areas that
customers demand, or which management perceives as adding value.

Let me give you an example: epm. I wrote epm, a work-alike to rpm.
A lot of people use it, and I've gotten a number of feature requests
in bugzilla. In response, I often request a patch, then eventually
close the bug because no patch is forthcoming.

If I were working for paying customers, this would not be an option
(provided the feature requests were reasonable). It would be my
*responsibility* to cater to the request. In Gentoo, however,
developers are able to use their own discretion. This is what I am
talking about.

(Psst... I'll let you in on a little secret. It doesn't have to
be a good patch. If a user gives me a really crappy patch, I'll
usually work on an implementation just because I appreciate that
they made an effort. Heck, even a detailed and thoughtful
description will usually suffice... ;-)

I hope that this clears up your confusion and puts us on the same team
again.

Best regards,
Aron
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Hi,
On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 03:18:03PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> > Maybe i've just gotten your statement really wrong, but as far
> > i understand it, i really have a bad feeling about it.
> [..]
> I hope that this clears up your confusion and puts us on the same team
> again.

Yeah, that cleared up a lot of things, seems i didn't quite get your
point from your first mail. Things are clear now and i actually agree
to your point.

cheers,
Wernfried

--
Fppmpppffpppmpfpffmffmppmpm Mfpmmmmmmfmm
fpp.mfpmmmmmmfmm@fpfppffpmmpppff.mfpfmpfmf.fmpfmffppmffmppppp.mmmmmf.mmmfmp
mfpfmpfmppfm://fpfppffpmmpppff.ppmfmfmpm.mmmfmp/~mmmppmpppmpppppmffppfppp/
http://www.namesuppressed.com/kenny/
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 07:55:50PM -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

I never ever would have considered becoming a developer if this hadn't
been the case. I have my day job to worry about responsibilities and
planning.

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

Back when I was not yet a Gentoo developer but just a developer using
Gentoo, whenever I ran into a problem with one tool or other I was
quite motivated to try and come up with a fix, because:
- it was easy to include the fix in the system because of the ebuild
format as well as the PORTAGE_OVERLAY feature
- it was easy to submit the fix back to Gentoo in a ready to use format
- I didn't have to wait forever for the next official release containing
the fix I contributed

I was also very pleased with all the up-to-date tools/applications at my
disposal.

Now that I am a Gentoo developer I just want to help any development
done on a Gentoo platform go as smoothly as possible by trying to keep
bug response time and TTP (time-to-portage) of new versions down.

So in my mind, as someone else already mentioned, Gentoo is from
developers for developers.

Regards,
Maurice.

P.S.: I must say I have not yet taken part in any Gentoo project that
isn't purely maintenance. Maybe if I did my view would change...
hmmm... /me looks for a list of current projects

P.P.S.: Oh, and I cannot send this mail without mentioning that since
the beginning, when I just started using Gentoo, I've always
felt welcome... something I didn't expect to find on the
internet.

--
Maurice van der Pot

Gentoo Linux Developer griffon26@gentoo.org http://www.gentoo.org
Creator of BiteMe! griffon26@kfk4ever.com http://www.kfk4ever.com

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow... Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.

<snip>

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.

This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo. I love it. I could care
less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu. I would still
develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.

> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

<starts slow clap>

Well, Aron, I honestly think that you've hit the nail on the head. I
never have been able to grasp how people could think Gentoo could ever
become a serious player in the corporate world of suits and guys with
nice hair and fake white teeth. Do we really want to go there? Do we
really need to start sending out assclowns in suits to shake hands with
a bunch of clueless corporate types, then schmooze them over golf just
to get people to use Gentoo? What ever happened to "because it's
friggin' cool"?

Don't get me wrong, I love our users. That being said, I work on Gentoo
not because of them, but because of *myself* and *my* personal itches.
It just so happens that there's a group of guys out there that seem to
want similar things, so we've banded together as this loose group of
developers, determined to make the best damn Linux *for us* that we can.
If suits want to use it, great! If not, well, they weren't paying the
bills anyway, so frag 'em! *grin*

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 20:36 -0400, Colin Kingsley wrote:
> Thats certaintly not to say that I'm against progress, but if people
> want support contracts, the absolute ultimate in stability, and install
> CD's shipped in pretty boxes with manuals, there are other distros
> available for them.

What's wrong with install CD's shipped with pretty boxes and manuals?
That's something I really wish Gentoo had, not because it would attract
the suits or anything, but because I think it would be friggin' sweet to
open my mailbox and see a shiny new copy of Gentoo Linux every six
months or so.

After all, it's all about the box art, man.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 13:56 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> I spend *at least* 1/3 of my time working on Gentoo. Without getting
> into a salary discussion, that's hp donating tens of thousands of
> dollars per year.
>
> Now whether you all consider my involvement to be worth that much is
> a different matter, of course. No comments from the peanut gallery,
> please. ;-)

...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built? For shame!

*grin*

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Tue Jun 07 2005, 06:38:41PM EDT]
> ...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built? For shame!

SO TRUE.

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

On Tue, 2005-06-07 at 18:38 -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> ...and you *still* haven't gotten an ia64 livecd built? For shame!

He's getting close.. Just got some more hardware put into dolphin last
week, and it has a spindle of blanks sitting right on top of it. so
umm, yeah, that's a start :)

-C

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Chris Gianelloni wrote:

>On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
>
>
>>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
>>users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
>>
>>
>
>This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo. I love it. I could care
>less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu. I would still
>develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.
>
>
>
You might reconsider this statement.

Suppose the entire user base will migrate to Ubuntu. The direct
consequence will be that the active dev corpus will grow thin, which
will lead to a dramatic decrease of distro's merits.
The dev and user communities are very close tighted together, but if
analyze who needs whom, you'll realize that dev community depends on
user community, not the other way around. No dev is irreplaceable, as
long as we have our cluefull user base in place.

Not every gentoo dev has a selfish motivation (at least not as selfish
as "having fun" or "being cool" motivations). For example, my reason to
becoming dev was to maintain unpopular (in dev world, of course)
packages and keep b.g.o as clean as I could. I ended up taking care of
100+ ebuilds, from which only 2 (ppp and squid) interests me as a person.

On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 08:14 +0300, Alin Nastac wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 19:55 -0400, Aron Griffis wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> >>users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >This is the reason why *I* use/develop Gentoo. I love it. I could care
> >less if every single user we have drops us for Ubuntu. I would still
> >develop Gentoo so long as it is still fun.
> >
> >
> >
> You might reconsider this statement.

Absolutely not.

I feel no reason to restate something simply because someone wants to
tear it apart and make it literal.

My point still stands. I work on Gentoo because I *love* it.

I, too, work on things I personally don't like/use, but the reason that
I do it is because I love doing Gentoo development as a whole, not
because some suit somewhere *told* me to do it. Like I said, I do
Gentoo development because it scratches my personal itch. The fact that
thousands of other people can benefit from my work is an added bonus,
but it is not my reason for doing it. I truly enjoy that our users not
only benefit from my work, but many times help with my work through
their contributions.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Aron Griffis wrote:
> In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
> testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
> never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
> of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

Using your list there would be two types of enterprise 'requirements':
process requirements and support requirements.

Improving and working towards the process requirements (sane commits,
better QA, etc.) doesn't mean that Gentoo would have to be any less fun.
And just because the Gentoo Foundation isn't in a position to provide
the support requirements (paid staff, support contracts, etc.) doesn't
mean that someone else couldn't provide those (or that Gentoo would make
it particularly hard to do so).

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I would suggest that:

1) this is a pretty common belief in any software developement project,
commercial, community led, or otherwise

2) its a bit wrong headed for various reasons, IMHO (see below)

and

3) I personally find it amusing. ;)

What developers seem to forget, is that they too are end-users. For
instance, a particular developer's responsibilities may be Baselayout,
Epm, Gentoo/Alpha, Gentoo/IA64, Keychain, Mozilla, Mutt, Vim, and such.
That makes him/her an end-user for everything else thats installed on
their system. In other words, developers are just a subset of the user base.

Secondly, polishing things for developer's sake doesn't preclude
polishing things for user's sake, and visa-versa.

So if it were up to me, it would be users first , which would encompass
everyone, including the developers!

Nathan

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--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Nathan L. Adams wrote: [Wed Jun 08 2005, 05:44:58PM EDT]
> Using your list there would be two types of enterprise 'requirements':
> process requirements and support requirements.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm not good at seeing distinctions
like that.

> What developers seem to forget, is that they too are end-users. For
> instance, a particular developer's responsibilities may be
> Baselayout, Epm, Gentoo/Alpha, Gentoo/IA64, Keychain, Mozilla, Mutt,
> Vim, and such. That makes him/her an end-user for everything else
> thats installed on their system. In other words, developers are just
> a subset of the user base.

Nah, I don't use any of that stuff.

Waaaiiit a minute, that list looks awful familiar... ;-)

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

> There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
> about "where is Gentoo going?"

It feels like this topic comes up every year :)

> I have been wondering that myself.
> Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
> enterprise player.

Maybe, maybe not ... but I don't see why we couldn't do a little bit
more to make it easier for others to use us as a base.

Isn't that what *we're* about - being a metadistribution?

> I think that attempting to take Gentoo in the "enterprise" direction
> is a mistake. I think that we are a hobbyist distribution. This
> doesn't mean that we should not strive to meet some of the enterprise
> goals. Those things can be important to hobbyists too. But I don't
> think we should be aiming for corporate America.

We have groups focusing in other directions. If there's a group of
people who want to make Gentoo enterprise-friendly, why not let them do
so?

> I don't even understand why that goal appeals to people.

An enterprise-friendly Gentoo appeals to me personally because I find
those problems interesting. They're problems that I enjoy learning
about, and trying to solve. I have enterprise experience both technical
and managerial, and I find the whole domain fascinating.

> Let other distros go there!

If you mean let other distros go to the place with suits and support
contracts and backporting, I agree. I want to see an
enterprise-friendly Gentoo, but I want to see the corporate risks and
costs taken on by third-parties outside the project.

> I want Gentoo to run in people's homes, in student
> dorm rooms, etc.

Well, yes, to a point, but (without intending to offend anyone) you can
learn a lot more by learning to setup a web server cluster than you can
running a web server in your bedroom. F.ex, in the bedroom, /home/httpd
seems as good a place as any to put your website. It's only when you
learn how to build larger systems that you can understand the merits of
moving to /var/www/<FQDN> or better still the /srv tree.

Part of my motivation is educational.

I believe that Gentoo can play an important educational role in people's
lives. I want a Gentoo distribution that can grow with a user's
experience and needs, not one that the ultimately have to move away from
because someone decided for those of us who are interested that we're
not going there.

And I think Gentoo can play an equally important educational role in
developers' lives too.

> Places where people want a fun distribution that
> they can tailor and work on easily.

Amen. I never want us to lose any of those points.

> I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.

Aren't we really a place where neat things are packaged up?

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

I agree that it's our developers who drive Gentoo, and not really our
users - simply because it's the developers who volunteer their time to
work on the things that interest them.

But I'm personally not comfortable with "it's our playground" being the
accepted approach to *everything*. I've been away from Gentoo for
awhile, and on coming back, I've been shocked and disgusted with what
seems to pass as acceptable treatment of users these days.

I think Gentoo needs a little more "it's about the users" than we have
right now just to keep us from collectively going off the rails.

Best regards,
Stu
--
Stuart Herbert stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer http://www.gentoo.org/
http://stu.gnqs.org/diary/

GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu
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--

Stuart Herbert wrote: [Thu Jun 09 2005, 06:32:04PM EDT]
> > I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
>
> Aren't we really a place where neat things are packaged up?

Hopefully both! :-)

Regarding the rest of your email, I don't disagree. I think that if
you read my follow-ups in the thread, you'll find that I addressed or
responded to a number of the same ideas. I'll be the first to admit
that my initial thoughts were not a complete picture of the world,
just a limited perspective and some food for thought...

Regards,
Aron

--
Aron Griffis
Gentoo Linux Developer

Stuart Herbert wrote:
>>There have been some really interesting points brought up recently
>>about "where is Gentoo going?"
>
> It feels like this topic comes up every year :)

I'd say it should come up a little more often :)

>>I have been wondering that myself.
>>Some people seem to think that Gentoo has the potential to be an
>>enterprise player.
>
> Maybe, maybe not ... but I don't see why we couldn't do a little bit
> more to make it easier for others to use us as a base.
>
> Isn't that what *we're* about - being a metadistribution?

If we follow the "metadistribution" trail we should have a set of
high-level tools that really help people manage their own binary
packages building and deployment. We (all?) know that the underlying
technology is already in Gentoo, but there are still no authoritative
tool(s) to :

1- help rolling your own distribution based on Gentoo
- tool to maintain frozen Portage trees
- tool to roll out a software update pack including config files
- ...

2- help centralizing packages deployment on several workstations
- help test software update packs on gold systems
- push packages to multiple systems
- do accountability on what's installed on systems
- ...

I'm not talking about releasing an "Enterprise-oriented" flavor of
Gentoo, I'm just talking about enabling people to do so and the minimal
deployment tools needed in a 5+ machine network.

The size of the Portage tree gives us a definitive advantage : you can
have 100% Portage-packages systems, so what's-in-this-box accountability
is not the nightmare it can be with other systems that heavily rely on
third-party RPMs. We should exploit that advantage.

--
Thierry Carrez (Koon)
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

I think the actual idea of what Gentoo does is much larger than people tend to realize it. When Linux first came out, it was a hacker's choice and has now expanded into something much greater than Linus himself I think had ever anticipated.

Now, when this whole idea of "distributions" came to play, I think the general goals of Linux became slightly distorted. In my opinion, the goal of Linux distributions is to get people to move to Linux.

Now, each distribution does this differently. I think Gentoo mainly comes down to customization (note, NOT SPEED). In a sense, this is why we are able to work so well with the embedded ports, because we can trim things down with that level of customization. Knoppix does it through a ready made CD that users can see what linux looks like. Fedora does it through a binary package system and automated hardware detection. Debian does it through a binary packaging system as well as a somewhat well monitored release system. All in all, everyone's got their own means to meet the same goal, getting people to move to Linux.

In the end I think that's why it's sometimes frustrating when I see x sucks and y sucks, just to say they suck. Now, saying "I think you should choose x over y because z and z best meets your goals" is something far better.

So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.

Chris White

> So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.

Actually, I rather like to think that Gentoo is one of the very few
distributions that cares more about meeting existing Linux
[power]users' needs rather than getting any new users to Linux. I
mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good first
Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very reason
why I use Gentoo. Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial user
grab, that's what they're good at.

Athul

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Athul Acharya wrote:
>>So to sum it up, it's not really (for me maybe) about enterprise v. hobbyist, it's about moving ANYONE over to Linux, period.
>
>
> Actually, I rather like to think that Gentoo is one of the very few
> distributions that cares more about meeting existing Linux
> [power]users' needs rather than getting any new users to Linux. I
> mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good first
> Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very reason
> why I use Gentoo. Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial user
> grab, that's what they're good at.
>
> Athul
>

OTOH, most computer users are unable to or uninterested in installing/configuring an OS. All they need is someone to setup Gentoo for them and they can basically use it like they would an MS Windows "appliance".

Zac
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

* On Sun Jun-12-2005 at 01:33:02 PM -0700, Zac Medico said:
> Athul Acharya wrote:
[...]
> > I mean lets face it, a distro that's largely DIY is hardly a good
> > first Linux, but an excellent second Linux and indeed thats the very
> > reason why I use Gentoo. Let Redhat/Fedora/Mandrake do the initial
> > user grab, that's what they're good at.
>
> OTOH, most computer users are unable to or uninterested in
> installing/configuring an OS. All they need is someone to setup
> Gentoo for them and they can basically use it like they would an MS
> Windows "appliance".

[Sorry, I've gone OT with this...]

I have a friend who is clueless when it comes to computers. I've set up
Gentoo for him -- after Mandrake, of all distros, was a pain to get
working with his pc -- and he's just stoked that he doesn't have to
worry about websites ruining his PC with ads and spyware. I have to
maintain it, but Gentoo makes that a breeze since I can log in from home
and update as necessary.

Gentoo draws a line between user and admin, while most OSs try to get
rid of this line. I think it's an important line to have for now. There
may not be as much danger in using a computer as driving a vehicle, but
it's still a machine which requires knowledge to safely operate well.
Most users simply aren't willing to learn what they should know since
they only see the computer as a means to an end. I don't think there's
anything wrong with that, but I sympathize with users who suffer through
needless OS problems just because they are in the habit of clicking OK
to the 100 message boxes they see pop up daily. Even if that message box
is really just a web page with a graphical link that runs some ActiveX
code...

I got sidetracked; my main point was that Gentoo is a great OS for even
the most careless user, as long as there is an admin to keep the system
running safely and smoothly.

Many thanks to the Gentoo devs, who have made this solid distro a
pleasure to run for everyone from server admins to PDA users.

(Note: I don't have Gentoo running on my PDA yet... but as soon as I can
boot the kernel that'll be my next goal)

--
Sami Samhuri

Aron Griffis wrote:

>This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
>IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow...
>
This thread started out garnering cheers of elitest developer
sentiment. There was even some mention of "if they don't like it they
can run something else".

Then, that notion was reeled in, the developers are part of the user
community.

There is an open debate as to the meaning of support for 'enterprise',
'cluster', and 'hobbyist';

does gentoo mean any of these?

In this thread I posted a suggested hack which must surely have been
suggested before my reading/perusal of gentoo-dev, but also addresses a
tangible element, growth.

-- Portage's power is too great in one place, it should be forged in the
hottest fires into the form of many rings for the leaders among gentoo,
with one ring to bind them.

Gentoo portage is growing, gentoo's communication network is growing in
complexity, and gentoo's organization is growing.

I saw it interesting that this is what describes the rise and fade of
FIDO net.

First there were hobbyist, later came zealots, some with bad attitudes,
and eventually a full fledged organization devoted to handling the
politics, which grew large enough for division into zones. There were
online businesses thriving from its value as well as the very
resourceful and isolated folks who had no other means of communicating
among the world at large.

One of fido's most interesting feature was its initial recognition that
its growth needed structure, and that structure was formed. fido's own
politiks from around the world failed to vote for survival of the
IFNA(International FidoNet Association). So fido dissolved its official
entity, and continuted to grow. Fido became a concept which spun off
saplings and intertwined with the net, but in majority of years it was
run by the folks with the biggest toys.

I mention fido because of one similarity which is uncannily familiar.
"only" 26% of the potential voters recently cast a vote for the gentoo
metastructure. we saw some puzzlement, bordering on grumbling, and some
amusement: "eeeyup that must be us!".

sooo. back to growth...

does the portage design foretell a single monolithic repo growing ad
infinitum? this is the common watering hole which draws every single
participant to the same well.

it's gotta work, 'emerge world' has gotta fly. does tinderbox
indicate this is a predictable outcome with a stable margin of error, as
t approaches infinity?

if not, where goes gentoo?


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Jim Northrup wrote:

>Aron Griffis wrote:
>
>
>
>>This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
>>IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow...
>>
>>
>>
>This thread started out garnering cheers of elitest developer
>sentiment. There was even some mention of "if they don't like it they
>can run something else".
>
>Then, that notion was reeled in, the developers are part of the user
>community.
>
>There is an open debate as to the meaning of support for 'enterprise',
>'cluster', and 'hobbyist';
>
>does gentoo mean any of these?
>
>In this thread I posted a suggested hack which must surely have been
>suggested before my reading/perusal of gentoo-dev, but also addresses a
>tangible element, growth.
>
>-- Portage's power is too great in one place, it should be forged in the
>hottest fires into the form of many rings for the leaders among gentoo,
>with one ring to bind them.
>
>Gentoo portage is growing, gentoo's communication network is growing in
>complexity, and gentoo's organization is growing.
>
>I saw it interesting that this is what describes the rise and fade of
>FIDO net.
>
>First there were hobbyist, later came zealots, some with bad attitudes,
>and eventually a full fledged organization devoted to handling the
>politics, which grew large enough for division into zones. There were
>online businesses thriving from its value as well as the very
>resourceful and isolated folks who had no other means of communicating
>among the world at large.
>
>One of fido's most interesting feature was its initial recognition that
>its growth needed structure, and that structure was formed. fido's own
>politiks from around the world failed to vote for survival of the
>IFNA(International FidoNet Association). So fido dissolved its official
>entity, and continuted to grow. Fido became a concept which spun off
>saplings and intertwined with the net, but in majority of years it was
>run by the folks with the biggest toys.
>
>I mention fido because of one similarity which is uncannily familiar.
>"only" 26% of the potential voters recently cast a vote for the gentoo
>metastructure. we saw some puzzlement, bordering on grumbling, and some
>amusement: "eeeyup that must be us!".
>
>sooo. back to growth...
>
>does the portage design foretell a single monolithic repo growing ad
>infinitum? this is the common watering hole which draws every single
>participant to the same well.
>
> it's gotta work, 'emerge world' has gotta fly. does tinderbox
>indicate this is a predictable outcome with a stable margin of error, as
>t approaches infinity?
>
>
>
The portage team has tons of great ideas up their sleeves to make
portage better, multiple repos being just one of the many. I'll let
them preach their stuff for now, lest I let slip ideas that never see
the light of day ;) Regardless changes are coming and they definately
make me very excited.
-Alec Warner
Ajec

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Wed, 2005-08-03 at 13:55 +0200, Sven Köhler wrote:
> > In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> > enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
> > testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> > We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> > backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> > update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
> > never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
> > of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> > external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> > for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
> > the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
>
> QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
> versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
> are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
> it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
> legitimate that?

This one is easy. A stable package's ebuild should not change. Period.
To "fix" the stable version, means that a new revision of the latest
stable version would need to be made, and that revision would need to be
tested, before it would go to stable. The only real exception to this
is security bugs. Also, in many cases, the bug in question requires
changes that are simply not feasible easily in the current stable
version, but quite easy in the latest version. It really boils down to
this: If you're having an issue with a package in Gentoo and it is
fixed in the latest ~arch version, then you should *use* the ~arch
version (remember, it doesn't mean "unstable" it means "testing") and
you should report back to the maintainers that this is working for you
so that they can get it moved into stable quicker. We don't have the
staff or the time to backport every fix to every stable version.
Remember that in many cases the "latest stable" version varies between
architectures.

> And yes, Gentoo does not backport patches to older version. But is it
> Gentoo's responsibility? If there's a bug in Postgresql 7.x and 8.x, and
> the PostgreSQL people only fix it 8.x-series - well: Debian and Redhat
> will backport the patches propably. They is a big reason why all the
> distrubutions with precompiled packages do that:
> - the updates has to be binary compatible with the old one

I don't feel that this is our responsibility. While we sometimes do
backport patches, we just don't have the manpower to make it policy.

> Gentoo doesn't suffer from that limitation. Gentoo offers ways to
> migrate a system from openssl 0.9.6 to openssl 0.9.7 for example. Other
> distributions doesn't offer that - although they could with better
> package managers.

Right.

> Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...

This is something that I think most people forget. Running Gentoo makes
you a Linux Systems Administrator. Sure, you're only being the
administrator for your machine, which might only have one user, but
you're the admin. With some of the other distributions, *they* are the
admin, and you're just a user. They make assumptions for you and limit
what you can and cannot do (without an enormous amount of work to bypass
their limits). This is especially apparent in the many cases where
users expect Gentoo to do everything for them, when it doesn't.

> ... writing my own packages for - let's say Redhat - takes more time
> than writing an ebuild for Gentoo. If you have to maintain a system with
> very special software, i would recomm Gentoo.

I would agree with you. Professionally, I work on Red Hat. I have to
build custom RPMs on a daily basis, and I can say that the simple syntax
of ebuilds is a tremendous advantage.

> Just some days ago, someone reinstalled a Server where we had PostGreSQL
> 8.0 running. He chose to install Debian - which offers PostGreSQL 7.4 -
> so what did he do? He compiled PostGreSQL 8.0 himself, to be abled to
> use our existing database. This will become hell the more packages you
> have to compile on you own. Any configure-make-install-like package,
> Perl-Module, etc... can be easy installed by using an ebuild.

You aren't "supposed" to compile packages on your own on Debian. You're
supposed to make your own DEB package and install that. Otherwise, you
are working outside the package manager. This is no different than on
Gentoo, just for many people, an ebuild is easier to write than creating
a DEB/RPM.

> In addition Gentoo is the only distribution i know, that supports
> installing multiple Java-version etc...
> A must-have for every real java-developer.

Agreed. This is also very true for proprietary applications that rely
on java.

> So i'd say: use Debian, if you have a relativly normal system to
> maintain, use Gentoo if you have the time - and never ever use Redhat or
> SuSE.

Gentoo tends to be more flexible with a smaller amount of work. This
makes it an excellent development platform, which is another reason why
many people say that Gentoo is "for the developers" first. I also think
that it is a wonderful end-user platform. My girlfriend runs Gentoo and
loves it. I started her off on Red Hat, and she found lots of little
things that bugged her, so I showed her Gentoo, and she was hooked,
since it was so easy for her to change those little peculiarities, not
to mention she knows a lot more about what it going on behind the scenes
then with those little redhat-config-* apps.

I personally hope that Gentoo never changes. I'd like to see quality
improve, but that doesn't require any major changes to Gentoo itself.
As far as enterprise support, I think a fork is honestly the best
answer. Not a fork that becomes completely independent, but a fork
focused on providing the enterprise features, like a slower release
cycle and backporting fixes, and rolling what it can back into Gentoo.
I think this sort of symbiotic relationship is really the only way to
successfully move Gentoo into the enterprise.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

I think it's value is that gentoo is for the developers.
: )

--
Riverfor [A chinese, a gentoo user, a programmer]

Interesting thread. I have used Gentoo in enterprise situations very
successfully, and I think the whole QA/live-tree argument is moot. In
an enterprise environment, you might have a backup/testing machine to
run your updates on first before they went live. You also wouldn't run
new packages unless they passed your own QA tests first.

Given the incredible flexibility of portage to support local mirrors,
binary package preparation, and localized versions of packages
(portdir_overlay), I would say that Gentoo is quite a contender in the
enterprise environment.

Perhaps we need some enterprise documentation to help people realize the
full potential of portage?


-Eric

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 09:04 -0400, Eric Brown wrote:
>
> Interesting thread. I have used Gentoo in enterprise situations very
> successfully, and I think the whole QA/live-tree argument is moot. In
> an enterprise environment, you might have a backup/testing machine to
> run your updates on first before they went live. You also wouldn't run
> new packages unless they passed your own QA tests first.
>
> Given the incredible flexibility of portage to support local mirrors,
> binary package preparation, and localized versions of packages
> (portdir_overlay), I would say that Gentoo is quite a contender in the
> enterprise environment.
>
> Perhaps we need some enterprise documentation to help people realize the
> full potential of portage?

I think you've missed some of the idea of "enterprise" support. See,
for starters, every person shouldn't have to create their own
implementation of everything. Perhaps a better solution would be a
package that when installed, builds up a local mirror, a binary package
repository (with revision control), an automated update system, a system
for updating rolled out machines without forcing the use of etc-update
on each machine, a slower moving stable tree capable of being certified
with applications, and most likely a phone number of someone to call
when the shit hits the fan.

While I will completely agree that Gentoo *can* be used in the
enterprise successfully, that does not make it "enterprise-ready", in
any sense. Many people also seem to misunderstand the concept of
"enterprise" when we are referring to it in this manner. We don't mean
"I'm running it on 10 servers in production" or anything like that. We
mean "I'm running this as our production platform for Linux services
across our entire enterprise, that could be hundreds or even thousands
of servers" instead. While it might be possible to maintain a handful
of Gentoo servers, it is next to impossible to maintain an army of them,
without spending significant up-front manpower to design, test, and
implement your own set of management tools. Gentoo has no real
management tools. There are a few here and there that do specific
tasks, but there isn't anything designed to really take control over
your network of systems. To be fair, Red Hat doesn't have anything like
this, either. Their "Satellite Server" product is good for initial
builds and for updates, but falls short on the management aspects.
Novell's offerings are probably the best examples of what we really
need. Of course, most people would be happy with even rudimentary
management capabilities, as currently, we have none. We don't have any
form of update server. You have to build one yourself. We don't have
any form of "jump-start" or "kickstart" for rapid automated deployments.
You have to build one yourself. Now, we do have the Gentoo Linux
Installer project, which has this as one of its goals, so we will have
this component at some point in the future.

Last, there's the "Our servers just went belly up, and I want to call up
someone on the phone and give them a piece of my mind" issue which gives
managers a warm, fuzzy feeling, that we cannot provide. If something
goes wrong with RHEL or SLES, you call up Red Hat or Novell and get them
to work on the problem. If something goes wrong with Gentoo, you hop on
IRC, or file a bug, and hope that somebody can help you in the time you
need it done in, and not in 3 weeks when the maintaining developer gets
back from his tour of the African Dung Beetle in it's own environment.
Liability is a big selling point for the enterprise.

I work for a telecommunications company, and we run Linux and Solaris.
For our Linux, we run Red Hat, even though they have, on staff, one of
the people that understands Gentoo's deployment capabilities better than
most, via catalyst and the GLI. Why do we run Red Hat? When something
breaks with one of their packages, we call them, and expect them to fix
it. It is also a name that gives upper management the warm fuzzies.
Gentoo has neither the brand recognition, nor the support capabilities
to be a good sale to management.

I'm not denying that Gentoo is very powerful, flexible, and gives the
power back to the administrator, but that doesn't make it enterprise
ready or friendly. A few success stories from a few people isn't much
to support the position, when we are lacking in so many simple and
obvious ways. Remember, if a manager can think of multiple ways to
knock down the use of Gentoo, like the ones I've given above, what are
you going to do to refute his claims?

I want to see Gentoo as an enterprise-capable distribution myself, but I
also understand that it is a long, hard road ahead of us, and there will
still be some things we simply cannot provide as a community
distribution, which was my reasoning behind the "fork". There would
need to be an entity that is responsible, liable, if you will, when
something goes wrong, and that has the manpower and resources to fix it.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

>On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 09:04 -0400, Eric Brown wrote:
>>
>> Interesting thread. I have used Gentoo in enterprise situations very
>> successfully, and I think the whole QA/live-tree argument is moot. In
>> an enterprise environment, you might have a backup/testing machine to
>> run your updates on first before they went live. You also wouldn't run
>> new packages unless they passed your own QA tests first.
>>
>> Given the incredible flexibility of portage to support local mirrors,
>> binary package preparation, and localized versions of packages
>> (portdir_overlay), I would say that Gentoo is quite a contender in the
>> enterprise environment.
>>
>> Perhaps we need some enterprise documentation to help people realize the
>> full potential of portage?
>
>I think you've missed some of the idea of "enterprise" support. See,
>for starters, every person shouldn't have to create their own
>implementation of everything. Perhaps a better solution would be a
>package that when installed, builds up a local mirror, a binary package
>repository (with revision control), an automated update system, a system
>for updating rolled out machines without forcing the use of etc-update
>on each machine, a slower moving stable tree capable of being certified
>with applications, and most likely a phone number of someone to call
>when the shit hits the fan.

Every business application of Gentoo I've done has been different. I don't think I could generalize my needs into a single ebuild. Although generally I have used rsyncd and apache, I never use them in the same way. What's so hard about using the default rsyncd config, and adding distfiles to your apache document root? (what 90% of people would use).

About automating updates and etc-update: you can rsync your config file sometimes and just bypass all of the portage stuff. You could mount some config dirs over nfs even. You could even remove config_protect on some dirs and roll your own custom packages.

About a slower moving portage tree for enterprise users: Great idea, I think there's a GLEP about that. I think it's best handled by third parties who can spend the money/man power on that kind of QA.

This brings me to your last point about calling someone when there are problems: There are companies that provide Linux services, even Gentoo specific services. Some of these companies might even provide enterprise-grade portage mirrors with support for the packages they maintain there.

>
>While I will completely agree that Gentoo *can* be used in the
>enterprise successfully, that does not make it "enterprise-ready", in
>any sense. Many people also seem to misunderstand the concept of
>"enterprise" when we are referring to it in this manner. We don't mean
>"I'm running it on 10 servers in production" or anything like that. We
>mean "I'm running this as our production platform for Linux services
>across our entire enterprise, that could be hundreds or even thousands
>of servers" instead. While it might be possible to maintain a handful
>of Gentoo servers, it is next to impossible to maintain an army of them,
>without spending significant up-front manpower to design, test, and
>implement your own set of management tools. Gentoo has no real
>management tools. There are a few here and there that do specific
>tasks, but there isn't anything designed to really take control over
>your network of systems. To be fair, Red Hat doesn't have anything like
>this, either. Their "Satellite Server" product is good for initial
>builds and for updates, but falls short on the management aspects.
>Novell's offerings are probably the best examples of what we really
>need. Of course, most people would be happy with even rudimentary
>management capabilities, as currently, we have none. We don't have any
>form of update server. You have to build one yourself. We don't have
>any form of "jump-start" or "kickstart" for rapid automated deployments.
>You have to build one yourself. Now, we do have the Gentoo Linux
>Installer project, which has this as one of its goals, so we will have
>this component at some point in the future.

I'm sorry, I never ran 1000 Gentoo machines in production like that, I thought enterprise meant this (answers.com):

en·ter·prise (ĕn'tər-prīz') pronunciation
n.

1. An undertaking, especially one of some scope, complication, and risk.
2. A business organization.
3. Industrious, systematic activity, especially when directed toward profit: Private enterprise is basic to capitalism.
4. Willingness to undertake new ventures; initiative: “Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs” (Henry David Thoreau).

Doesn't this just go to show that in business, everyone wants something different from Gentoo? What does Novell offer to manage large numbers of linux boxen? Are you sure projects like OpenMosix don't have tools you could use to manage such a large number of machines?

Maybe we can't rely on portage so much in scenarios where replication is the goal...

>
>Last, there's the "Our servers just went belly up, and I want to call up
>someone on the phone and give them a piece of my mind" issue which gives
>managers a warm, fuzzy feeling, that we cannot provide. If something
>goes wrong with RHEL or SLES, you call up Red Hat or Novell and get them
>to work on the problem. If something goes wrong with Gentoo, you hop on
>IRC, or file a bug, and hope that somebody can help you in the time you
>need it done in, and not in 3 weeks when the maintaining developer gets
>back from his tour of the African Dung Beetle in it's own environment.
>Liability is a big selling point for the enterprise.

Of course, I'm sure you can't call Red Hat or Suse if you don't pay them some way or another. If you don't pay, could you find such a supportive community on IRC or in forums? (I think not)

There are lots of Gentoo gurus who will gladly accept your money to help you fix your problems =)

>
>I work for a telecommunications company, and we run Linux and Solaris.
>For our Linux, we run Red Hat, even though they have, on staff, one of
>the people that understands Gentoo's deployment capabilities better than
>most, via catalyst and the GLI. Why do we run Red Hat? When something
>breaks with one of their packages, we call them, and expect them to fix
>it. It is also a name that gives upper management the warm fuzzies.
>Gentoo has neither the brand recognition, nor the support capabilities
>to be a good sale to management.

Sounds like FUD to me. Use what works for you though. If you managers really need that big brand name with that 800 number, that's just how you'll have to do it. Perhaps I've been lucky at the places I work where I am simply responsible myself for keeping certain systems up, and that's that.

>
>I'm not denying that Gentoo is very powerful, flexible, and gives the
>power back to the administrator, but that doesn't make it enterprise
>ready or friendly. A few success stories from a few people isn't much
>to support the position, when we are lacking in so many simple and
>obvious ways. Remember, if a manager can think of multiple ways to
>knock down the use of Gentoo, like the ones I've given above, what are
>you going to do to refute his claims?

I wouldn't refute my manager's claims if he controlled my paycheck :D
But in my professional opinion, as someone who has had to manage up to 10 Linux servers at a time, Gentoo was by far the best choice. That's what I'd say to my manager if he ever asked me why I want to use Gentoo.

>
>I want to see Gentoo as an enterprise-capable distribution myself, but I
>also understand that it is a long, hard road ahead of us, and there will
>still be some things we simply cannot provide as a community
>distribution, which was my reasoning behind the "fork". There would
>need to be an entity that is responsible, liable, if you will, when
>something goes wrong, and that has the manpower and resources to fix it.
>

Ever consider founding a company that specializes in Enterprise Gentoo deployment and support? It sounds like there could be quite a demand for such services :)

>--
>Chris Gianelloni
>Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
>Games - Developer
>Gentoo Linux

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 11:48 -0400, Eric Brown wrote:
> Every business application of Gentoo I've done has been different. I don't think I could generalize my needs into a single ebuild. Although generally I have used rsyncd and apache, I never use them in the same way. What's so hard about using the default rsyncd config, and adding distfiles to your apache document root? (what 90% of people would use).

You completely missed the management aspect here. I'm talking about
some form of actual enterprise-ready management framework for
controlling a set of Gentoo servers centrally from deployment to
maintenance and upgrades.

> About automating updates and etc-update: you can rsync your config file sometimes and just bypass all of the portage stuff. You could mount some config dirs over nfs even. You could even remove config_protect on some dirs and roll your own custom packages.

You can... You can... You can...

All I heard here was a bunch of excuses about how a person can take the
time to implement something that's been implemented by countless other
people, because Gentoo does not provide a framework for doing this. The
whole idea of being enterprise-ready is having a drop-in solution that
works right off the bat, with minimal to no configuration for basic
services. All of your solutions requires manpower to accomplish that
not every enterprise can afford to spend. Once again, this is why
Gentoo is currently not used in these situations.

> About a slower moving portage tree for enterprise users: Great idea, I think there's a GLEP about that. I think it's best handled by third parties who can spend the money/man power on that kind of QA.

Yes, there is a GLEP about this. This is also the first step to being
able to provide any level of enterprise-readiness. You simply cannot
tell someone to upgrade glibc to some new version if something is wrong
with the current one. They want a patch for the current one. Think
bug-fixes only with absolutely zero new features between whatever form
of releases are created.

> This brings me to your last point about calling someone when there are problems: There are companies that provide Linux services, even Gentoo specific services. Some of these companies might even provide enterprise-grade portage mirrors with support for the packages they maintain there.

I don't think I would stake my company's infrastructure on the reliance
on Bob and Joe's Gentoo Support Hotline, sorry. Not to mention you
haven't actually given a single example of someone who can provide this
level of enterprise support. There's a reason why you haven't given an
example. None exists.

> I'm sorry, I never ran 1000 Gentoo machines in production like that, I thought enterprise meant this (answers.com):
>
> en·ter·prise (ĕn'tər-prīz') pronunciation
> n.
>
> 1. An undertaking, especially one of some scope, complication, and risk.
> 2. A business organization.
> 3. Industrious, systematic activity, especially when directed toward profit: Private enterprise is basic to capitalism.
> 4. Willingness to undertake new ventures; initiative: “Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs” (Henry David Thoreau).

Wow. A dictionary definition that is completely out of context and
doesn't account for the word enterprise being used as a technical
representation.

I've got a few "enterprise" definitions for you, too.

The Enterprise type is a two-man hiking sailing dinghy with a
distinctive blue sail and no spinnaker. Despite being one of the older
classes of dinghies, it remains popular and well used for both cruising
and racing. It has a combination of stability, size and power which
contiues to appeal to all ages, and to sailing schools.

...or...

Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series set in the
Star Trek universe.(Until the third season its title was simply
Enterprise, and it is often abbreviated as ST:ENT or ENT).The series
follows the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise (NX-01), the first
human interstellar ship that can achieve Warp 5.Enterprise premiered in
the United States on September 26, 2001, and is presently in its fourth,
and final, season.

...though the one I am looking for, and the one that fits the scope of
this conversation is this one:

In the computer industry, an enterprise is an organization that uses
computers. In practice, the term is applied much more often to larger
organizations than smaller ones.

We are using this in practice. Therefore, we are speaking of large
organizations, and not just *any* organization.

> Doesn't this just go to show that in business, everyone wants something different from Gentoo? What does Novell offer to manage large numbers of linux boxen? Are you sure projects like OpenMosix don't have tools you could use to manage such a large number of machines?

Not really. It does go to show that you'll go to great lengths to try
to prove a point, even when you're grasping at straws. Everybody
wanting something from Gentoo has zero to do with the single goal of
providing an enterprise-ready version of Gentoo, which is the topic that
we are discussing.

Novell has several tools, that when used in combination, form a cohesive
framework for deploying, managing, and upgrading systems. What's even
better, is it isn't just limited to Linux, but I'll leave that as an
exercise for the readers... ;] Novell uses a combination of these
components, such as eDirectory and ZENworks, to form this framework.

> Maybe we can't rely on portage so much in scenarios where replication is the goal...

Portage really has nothing to do with deployment or management. In
fact, the only thing it really does is package management, which is
probably why it is called a package management tool, and not an
enterprise resource manager.

> Of course, I'm sure you can't call Red Hat or Suse if you don't pay them some way or another. If you don't pay, could you find such a supportive community on IRC or in forums? (I think not)

Of course not, nobody ever claimed that you could, nor implied it.

Nobody has ever mentioned *anything* about our community, because it has
exactly zero value in the enterprise, especially as a support medium.
Try telling some upper manager that he needs to download an IRC client,
then connect to irc.freenode.net, then join #gentoo and ask his question
in the channel, along with all the other noise, then hope that someone
answers his question. Try explaining to him that this is the standard
form of support for your deployment, and watch as you get laughed out of
the office and off to the unemployment line.

> There are lots of Gentoo gurus who will gladly accept your money to help you fix your problems =)

Sorry, but I'm not calling vapier and listening to him tell me about his
wang when I have an issue with LDAP replication that I need resolved
immediately as my customers are starting to call in quite irate. I
would want a company with a dedicated staff on-hand to support my needs
that is available when I need them.

> >I work for a telecommunications company, and we run Linux and Solaris.
> >For our Linux, we run Red Hat, even though they have, on staff, one of
> >the people that understands Gentoo's deployment capabilities better than
> >most, via catalyst and the GLI. Why do we run Red Hat? When something
> >breaks with one of their packages, we call them, and expect them to fix
> >it. It is also a name that gives upper management the warm fuzzies.
> >Gentoo has neither the brand recognition, nor the support capabilities
> >to be a good sale to management.
>
> Sounds like FUD to me. Use what works for you though. If you managers really need that big brand name with that 800 number, that's just how you'll have to do it. Perhaps I've been lucky at the places I work where I am simply responsible myself for keeping certain systems up, and that's that.

Ooohh... FUD. Amazing how someone telling the truth is immediately
labeled as FUD, especially when it goes against the misconceptions and
bold-faced lies that someone that is a bit overzealous in his devotion
is trying to push. My managers are normal managers, just like you would
find all over the enterprise. They want to know about risks and costs,
and are damn well and ready to pay for support if it means that their
ass won't be on the line when something breaks. It is starting to sound
to me that your idea of "enterprise" is "production" when the two are
far different. Think of enterprise as an order of magnitude or more
greater than production. If you're thinking 10 servers, think 100, or
1000.

> I wouldn't refute my manager's claims if he controlled my paycheck :D

Haven't you ever been in a meeting? You know, where they ask your
opinion. Are you a drone? Do you just do everything that you're told
and question nothing?

If so, then you're *perfect* for a middle manager position in any large
enterprise corporation. Start puckering your lips now, it's a position
you'll get used to quite quickly. For the rest of us out here, we
actually give our managers our opinions, and when we're trying to use a
product, we fight for it.

> But in my professional opinion, as someone who has had to manage up to 10 Linux servers at a time, Gentoo was by far the best choice. That's what I'd say to my manager if he ever asked me why I want to use Gentoo.

I don't mean to offend you, but 10 servers is nothing like an enterprise
deployment. I have more than 10 servers at my house, and I surely don't
consider that any kind of enterprise. Instead, think about managing
1000 geographically dispersed servers. This is more the scale that
we're talking about, not the local Baptist church's IT needs.

Gentoo is currently unmaintainable at this scale without a significant
investment in infrastructure and development to make the system
manageable. Think of it this way, if I can pay 4 developers to work on
this project for 6 months, and each developer makes $50,000 a year, or I
can pay Novell $100,000 and have the system in place in 2 weeks, which
do you think I would do? This is the exact reason why Gentoo is not
used in the enterprise more. There is simply too high a barrier of
entry into making a usable and manageable Gentoo deployment.

> Ever consider founding a company that specializes in Enterprise Gentoo deployment and support? It sounds like there could be quite a demand for such services :)

Yeah, I considered it. Then I came down from the acid trip and realized
how hateful it would be. I'm sorry, but I definitely don't want to
spend my time being restricted to working only on the problems that some
large corporation deemed was important to them, being harassed and
stressed to meet their deadlines. I work on Gentoo because I enjoy it,
not because I gain from it financially. I have no problem adding
enterprise features or improving enterprise support, but I get enough
stress at my day job, why should I get even more from my hobby?

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

050804 Chris Gianelloni wrote:
-- long interesting account of life in the enterprise snipped --
> I want to see Gentoo as an enterprise-capable distribution myself,
> but I also understand that it is a long, hard road ahead of us
> and there will still be things we cannot provide as a community distro.
> There would need to be an entity responsible when something goes wrong
> and that has the manpower and resources to fix it.

There's no way a volunteer organisation like Gentoo could undertake that.
What would be essential is a company with capital invested
& probably an insurance policy somewhere in the background,
which employs Gentoo-knowledgeable staff to build & fix systems.
It would probably have its own mirror with a selection of Gentoo packages,
which it is prepared to guarantee as reliable & safe to use,
& would develop all the enterprise-level management tools you describe.
Hopefully, it would give something back to the underlying volunteer Gentoo
by way of free staff time & some tools all of us might benefit from.

The first step is a visit to your friendly neighbourhood bank manager (smile).

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT `-O----------O---' University of Toronto
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Long one kiddies... responses inlined, bit more interested in
discussion of what's required/desired then "your definition of
enterprise sucks"... (throws on the flamesuit)...


On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 02:35:08PM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 11:48 -0400, Eric Brown wrote:
> > Every business application of Gentoo I've done has been different. I don't think I could generalize my needs into a single ebuild. Although generally I have used rsyncd and apache, I never use them in the same way. What's so hard about using the default rsyncd config, and adding distfiles to your apache document root? (what 90% of people would use).
>
> You completely missed the management aspect here. I'm talking about
> some form of actual enterprise-ready management framework for
> controlling a set of Gentoo servers centrally from deployment to
> maintenance and upgrades.

Elaborate on what you explicitly want out of portage please- the
domain concept (aside from being useful design wise) *should* allow
groupping of boxes (groupping of domains really) behind it, so you can
effectively have a set of boxes, pushing changes to each.

Mind you no code written, but current design is intended to allow
remote chunks to be swapped in/out of portagelib on the fly
(including the actual portage configuration).

> > About automating updates and etc-update: you can rsync your config file sometimes and just bypass all of the portage stuff. You could mount some config dirs over nfs even. You could even remove config_protect on some dirs and roll your own custom packages.
>
> You can... You can... You can...
>
> All I heard here was a bunch of excuses about how a person can take the
> time to implement something that's been implemented by countless other
> people, because Gentoo does not provide a framework for doing this. The
> whole idea of being enterprise-ready is having a drop-in solution that
> works right off the bat, with minimal to no configuration for basic
> services. All of your solutions requires manpower to accomplish that
> not every enterprise can afford to spend. Once again, this is why
> Gentoo is currently not used in these situations.

Better angle of discussion rather then "we aren't there yet" is the
specifics of what is needed to *get* there in peoples opinion.

It's not an overnight thing, glep19 (stable portage tree) addresses a
chunk of concerns when/if it's implemented, but I'm a bit more
interested in the the other tools people desire alongside.

Re: a drop-in solution, considering that gentoo is effectively all
over the map (seriously, look at the tree), define the profile for the
drop-in; drop-in ftp, drop-in web server, drop-in mosix node... etc.

Specifics...

Hell, I have yet to see what I would define as a proper solution for
config manamagent for N gentoo boxes. NFS solution possibly, but that
seems a bit hackish to me.

> > This brings me to your last point about calling someone when there are problems: There are companies that provide Linux services, even Gentoo specific services. Some of these companies might even provide enterprise-grade portage mirrors with support for the packages they maintain there.
>
> I don't think I would stake my company's infrastructure on the reliance
> on Bob and Joe's Gentoo Support Hotline, sorry. Not to mention you
> haven't actually given a single example of someone who can provide this
> level of enterprise support. There's a reason why you haven't given an
> example. None exists.

Moot point frankly, considering we're all volunteers; someone
*could* get off their butts and start up an attempt to provide hand
holding (effectively what you're coloring the management arg as)
services, but even if they did, the followup arg would be that you
can't yet trust this new support company, because they're new.
Etc.

Basically, we don't have control over that portion, so... what
can be mangled that we *do* have control over, and has an effect?


>
> [snip]
> In the computer industry, an enterprise is an organization that uses
> computers. In practice, the term is applied much more often to larger
> organizations than smaller ones.
>
> We are using this in practice. Therefore, we are speaking of large
> organizations, and not just *any* organization.

That's a really crappy description, rather nebulous. :)
And... nobody probably cares about loose definitions, 'cause loose
definitions are moving targets. Again, specific suggestions/requests
would rock.

Mentioned management tools, well, get into specifics; pxe network
installs/imaging? Single tree/cache for N servers? Ability to push
updates out to a specific box, or set of servers? Integration of
portage contents db with IDS tools?


> Novell has several tools, that when used in combination, form a cohesive
> framework for deploying, managing, and upgrading systems. What's even
> better, is it isn't just limited to Linux, but I'll leave that as an
> exercise for the readers... ;] Novell uses a combination of these
> components, such as eDirectory and ZENworks, to form this framework.
>
> > Maybe we can't rely on portage so much in scenarios where replication is the goal...
>
> Portage really has nothing to do with deployment or management. In
> fact, the only thing it really does is package management, which is
> probably why it is called a package management tool, and not an
> enterprise resource manager.

Any enterprise resource manager is going to have to fool with pkgs at
some point- that's my line of interest in this.


> Sorry, but I'm not calling vapier and listening to him tell me about his
> wang when I have an issue with LDAP replication that I need resolved
> immediately as my customers are starting to call in quite irate. I
> would want a company with a dedicated staff on-hand to support my needs
> that is available when I need them.

See bit above about being (effectively) outside of our control (a
niche someone with a brain could exploit also).

Besides, it would be pointless to call vapier to hear wang tales; just
stick your head in #gentoo-dev, you get them for free there...

> > I wouldn't refute my manager's claims if he controlled my paycheck :D
>
> Haven't you ever been in a meeting? You know, where they ask your
> opinion. Are you a drone? Do you just do everything that you're told
> and question nothing?
[snip]

If it's going to descend into a bit of flaming (has it already?), I'll
gladly go back to poking at portage- I'd rather see something constructive out of this,
you obviously see areas where gentoo isn't up to snuff (as do I)...
so... what would be useful to implement *now*, what would be required
*down the line*, etc.

Mind you, our hands aren't bound, their are areas that work can be
done in.


> Gentoo is currently unmaintainable at this scale without a significant
> investment in infrastructure and development to make the system
> manageable. Think of it this way, if I can pay 4 developers to work on
> this project for 6 months, and each developer makes $50,000 a year, or I
> can pay Novell $100,000 and have the system in place in 2 weeks, which
> do you think I would do? This is the exact reason why Gentoo is not
> used in the enterprise more. There is simply too high a barrier of
> entry into making a usable and manageable Gentoo deployment.
Or, you find a collection of trained coder monkeys who are oddballs
who might have an interest in implementing this stuff on their own
time, and try to nudge them in the correct direction; no, this isn't a
solution, but again, having an ent. solution (going by your statement)
isn't going to be funded by anyone.

Ok, fine. So it goes.

Meanwhile, reiterating my point, I'd rather see a discussion of what
people *want* in the way of tools, then "we aren't there yet".
Generally known that you have to roll your own somewhat for tools,
well, would rather know what people want then see then another round
of kicking the dead horse.


~harring

I think Brian is right, we should stick to being constructive.

Let's start an enterprise project on Gentoo.org
Goals:
1) provide documentation on existing tools and practices for
business/enterprise users.
2) try to enhance the set of tools to build a comprehensive
framework that makes it easy to use and deploy Gentoo in a
business/enterprise environment.
3) provide information so that concerned parties can find
companies that specialize in Gentoo deployment/management/support.


Any ideas?


--Eric

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 14:37 -0500, Brian D. Harring wrote:
> Elaborate on what you explicitly want out of portage please- the
> domain concept (aside from being useful design wise) *should* allow
> groupping of boxes (groupping of domains really) behind it, so you can
> effectively have a set of boxes, pushing changes to each.
>
> Mind you no code written, but current design is intended to allow
> remote chunks to be swapped in/out of portagelib on the fly
> (including the actual portage configuration).

The only things I could see being needed out of portage itself is the
ability to control "emerge" commands remotely, such as forcing an update
of apache to $version to resolve a vulnerability.

Besides the back-end portage pieces, there would need to be a front-end
interface for performing these tasks.

> Better angle of discussion rather then "we aren't there yet" is the
> specifics of what is needed to *get* there in peoples opinion.

Agreed completely.

Some things I could see as needed:

1. applying updates on any file that is under CONFIG_PROTECT where the
md5/file-size matches that in /var/db for the file without user
interaction
2. automatic removal of files under CONFIG_PROTECT where the
md5/file-size matches that in /var/db during unmerge

> It's not an overnight thing, glep19 (stable portage tree) addresses a
> chunk of concerns when/if it's implemented, but I'm a bit more
> interested in the the other tools people desire alongside.

As am I. The Installer is one such project. We do not have any project
that I am aware of that is designed to resolve the problem of remotely
managing a server. There is nothing for pushing config changes/package
updates/new packages. There would need to be some interface for doing
these things. Stop by any trade show, such as LWE, and you'll see guys
pushing their wares on remotely managing Linux. We should provide
something like this ourselves.

eg. If I want to change the subnet mask or default router on 50 machines
on my network, I should be able to do so via a simple interface and have
the work done automatically.

> Re: a drop-in solution, considering that gentoo is effectively all
> over the map (seriously, look at the tree), define the profile for the
> drop-in; drop-in ftp, drop-in web server, drop-in mosix node... etc.

I meant a drop-in management solution, not a specific set of server
profiles, though those could be created with the Installer. In fact, I
see the Installer as one of the first pieces of the framework necessary
for deployment and management of a large number of servers. Once the
netfe interface is completed with the Installer, you will be able to PXE
boot your server and have it load a specific installer profile, and it
will install Gentoo to those specifications. Beyond that, we lose
control of the server and must manually perform all other actions.

> Specifics...
>
> Hell, I have yet to see what I would define as a proper solution for
> config manamagent for N gentoo boxes. NFS solution possibly, but that
> seems a bit hackish to me.

There isn't a proper solution yet. Honestly, something like a
repository holding configuration information with revision control would
probably be best, so you can revert changes. There are quite a few
systems like this out for Red Hat and others, but nothing that is
Gentoo-specific, or even Gentoo-capable, as far as I know. We should
beat people to the punch and design one ourselves.

The main things we need to provide are:

Provisioning - building a server from bare metal to some pre-determined
state
Management - being able to make changes to existing servers without
manually logging into each to make the changes
Updates - this somewhat goes with management, but a facility for
disseminating patches or updated packages to servers

> Moot point frankly, considering we're all volunteers; someone
> *could* get off their butts and start up an attempt to provide hand
> holding (effectively what you're coloring the management arg as)
> services, but even if they did, the followup arg would be that you
> can't yet trust this new support company, because they're new.
> Etc.

Not entirely moot, as a company could be formed in cooperation with the
Foundation, as I stated earlier in the thread. This symbiotic
relationship would give the new company a bit more credit, as it will be
supported by the Foundation. This could be a Foundation-owned company,
or a completely separate entity. Anyway, this isn't so much my point,
as many people *are* willing to forgo having a human voice on the end of
a phone.

> Basically, we don't have control over that portion, so... what
> can be mangled that we *do* have control over, and has an effect?

Our tools. Currently, we have very few "Gentoo tools" used for managing
a system. We would need to define the requirements for these tools, and
then work on ways of getting them built. It's like I said, I think the
primary weakness in Gentoo's enterprise adoption is the need for each
company to reinvent the wheel on their own deployment. If we had a set
of extensible tools for managing Gentoo machines, then companies would
have a framework for building upon to meet their own needs. Why does
everyone, for example, need to invent their own way of adding users to
their network? Why can't we provide some method and allow them to
customize it and extend it?

> Mentioned management tools, well, get into specifics; pxe network
> installs/imaging? Single tree/cache for N servers? Ability to push
> updates out to a specific box, or set of servers? Integration of
> portage contents db with IDS tools?

PXE installs is on its way. Being able to share the tree/caches would
definitely be of benefit. I already discussed updates. I hadn't even
considered the IDS integration, but that is an awesome idea. How about
configuration file management? Asset management? Inventory database?
How about a "remote assistance" feature? Since Gentoo is not only used
on servers, but could also be deployed on the workstation, we should
also provide tools for managing and supporting them, too. What about
some form of policy enforcement? Things like turning on Remote Desktop
Sharing in KDE/Gnome, so IT staff can assist users with issues.

> > Portage really has nothing to do with deployment or management. In
> > fact, the only thing it really does is package management, which is
> > probably why it is called a package management tool, and not an
> > enterprise resource manager.
>
> Any enterprise resource manager is going to have to fool with pkgs at
> some point- that's my line of interest in this.

Correct. I think my meaning was that we need to look at things
*besides* package management. You guys seem to already have a good idea
of the things we need and I've seen progress towards making portage more
enterprise-friendly with some of the features planned for the future.

The main thing we need is a powerful portage API that allows complete
control of portage without using "emerge" at the command line.

> > Gentoo is currently unmaintainable at this scale without a significant
> > investment in infrastructure and development to make the system
> > manageable. Think of it this way, if I can pay 4 developers to work on
> > this project for 6 months, and each developer makes $50,000 a year, or I
> > can pay Novell $100,000 and have the system in place in 2 weeks, which
> > do you think I would do? This is the exact reason why Gentoo is not
> > used in the enterprise more. There is simply too high a barrier of
> > entry into making a usable and manageable Gentoo deployment.

> Or, you find a collection of trained coder monkeys who are oddballs
> who might have an interest in implementing this stuff on their own
> time, and try to nudge them in the correct direction; no, this isn't a
> solution, but again, having an ent. solution (going by your statement)
> isn't going to be funded by anyone.

I meant this to mean $company pays developers to implement this for
themselves, whereas Novell/Red Hat have already paid for most of this
work on their own distributions. The idea being that we are much more
likely to get enterprise adoption if we have some tools in place, even
if rudimentary in comparison, where currently we have nothing.

> Ok, fine. So it goes.
>
> Meanwhile, reiterating my point, I'd rather see a discussion of what
> people *want* in the way of tools, then "we aren't there yet".
> Generally known that you have to roll your own somewhat for tools,
> well, would rather know what people want then see then another round
> of kicking the dead horse.

Quite simply:

Some form of GUI (and console) tools capable of controlling every aspect
of any given set of Gentoo servers within an enterprise, from birth
until death.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 05:31:43PM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> The only things I could see being needed out of portage itself is the
> ability to control "emerge" commands remotely, such as forcing an update
> of apache to $version to resolve a vulnerability.

The requirements of portage, or whatever component supplies
(essentially) pkg management of remote boxes is going to be a bit more
complex then just pushing emerge commands out; aside from config data,
it'll probably centralize the vdb type contents somewhere, let alone
avoiding N copies of the ebuild tree on each server.

Basically, whatever daemon is running clientside for all of this will
have to support a good bit of handing off commands to portage, hence
the interest (since from my point of view, it's a starting point).


> Some things I could see as needed:
>
> 1. applying updates on any file that is under CONFIG_PROTECT where the
> md5/file-size matches that in /var/db for the file without user
> interactio

That would have to be determined prior to starting the update push.
I'd think basically a CONFIG_PROTECT limited scan of boxes to be
updated, verifying things are in order according to the vdb (whether
remote or local to that box) probably would fly.


> 2. automatic removal of files under CONFIG_PROTECT where the
> md5/file-size matches that in /var/db during unmerge

current vdb implementation relies on md5/file-size, future should rely
on refcount, and be a good bit more configurable.


> > It's not an overnight thing, glep19 (stable portage tree) addresses a
> > chunk of concerns when/if it's implemented, but I'm a bit more
> > interested in the the other tools people desire alongside.
Offhand, responding to my own snippet, I'd love to know what's going
on with glep19...

>
> As am I. The Installer is one such project. We do not have any project
> that I am aware of that is designed to resolve the problem of remotely
> managing a server. There is nothing for pushing config changes/package
> updates/new packages. There would need to be some interface for doing
> these things. Stop by any trade show, such as LWE, and you'll see guys
> pushing their wares on remotely managing Linux. We should provide
> something like this ourselves.
>
> eg. If I want to change the subnet mask or default router on 50 machines
> on my network, I should be able to do so via a simple interface and have
> the work done automatically.

Approach I've been thinking about (that fits semi-neatly exempting
collision-protect) is essentially config pkgs, binding them on the fly
to pkgs being pushed out. Essentially, base apache pkg (that out of
an ebuild tree), with it's depend tweaked automatically to pull in a
matching configuration pkg.

Pushing out config updates wouldn't be too hard if handled in this
manner, although generation of the config pkgs themselves would be a
bit tricky.


> > Re: a drop-in solution, considering that gentoo is effectively all
> > over the map (seriously, look at the tree), define the profile for the
> > drop-in; drop-in ftp, drop-in web server, drop-in mosix node... etc.
>
> I meant a drop-in management solution, not a specific set of server
> profiles, though those could be created with the Installer. In fact, I
> see the Installer as one of the first pieces of the framework necessary
> for deployment and management of a large number of servers. Once the
> netfe interface is completed with the Installer, you will be able to PXE
> boot your server and have it load a specific installer profile, and it
> will install Gentoo to those specifications. Beyond that, we lose
> control of the server and must manually perform all other actions.
Niete.

> > Specifics...
> >
> > Hell, I have yet to see what I would define as a proper solution for
> > config manamagent for N gentoo boxes. NFS solution possibly, but that
> > seems a bit hackish to me.
>
> There isn't a proper solution yet. Honestly, something like a
> repository holding configuration information with revision control would
> probably be best, so you can revert changes. There are quite a few
> systems like this out for Red Hat and others, but nothing that is
> Gentoo-specific, or even Gentoo-capable, as far as I know. We should
> beat people to the punch and design one ourselves.
>
> The main things we need to provide are:
>
> Provisioning - building a server from bare metal to some pre-determined
> state
Installer...

> Management - being able to make changes to existing servers without
> manually logging into each to make the changes
Domain class should provide for it
> Updates - this somewhat goes with management, but a facility for
> disseminating patches or updated packages to servers
Same as above


> Our tools. Currently, we have very few "Gentoo tools" used for managing
> a system. We would need to define the requirements for these tools, and
> then work on ways of getting them built. It's like I said, I think the
> primary weakness in Gentoo's enterprise adoption is the need for each
> company to reinvent the wheel on their own deployment. If we had a set
> of extensible tools for managing Gentoo machines, then companies would
> have a framework for building upon to meet their own needs. Why does
> everyone, for example, need to invent their own way of adding users to
> their network? Why can't we provide some method and allow them to
> customize it and extend it?
glep27 comes to mind re: users, although that's not management of
samba users (fex).


> > Mentioned management tools, well, get into specifics; pxe network
> > installs/imaging? Single tree/cache for N servers? Ability to push
> > updates out to a specific box, or set of servers? Integration of
> > portage contents db with IDS tools?
>
> PXE installs is on its way. Being able to share the tree/caches would
> definitely be of benefit. I already discussed updates. I hadn't even
> considered the IDS integration, but that is an awesome idea. How about
> configuration file management?

Configuration file management, as long as it's centralized, can be
slightly bastardized as pkgs for pushing/updating. If that's the
case, it should be possible to avoid reinventing the wheel for
handling it- hence the IDS comment. Verification of config's prior to
stomping them on an upgrade.

> Asset management? Inventory database?
No good answer on that one, since it's outside the ken of what my area
of interest (portage) :)
Offhand, I'd expect whatever method is used to push commands down via
the domain class, probably can be extended to add these additional
knobs. It really depends on what you're trying to query though,
cpuinfo/df, or license management...


> > > Portage really has nothing to do with deployment or management. In
> > > fact, the only thing it really does is package management, which is
> > > probably why it is called a package management tool, and not an
> > > enterprise resource manager.
> >
> > Any enterprise resource manager is going to have to fool with pkgs at
> > some point- that's my line of interest in this.
>
> Correct. I think my meaning was that we need to look at things
> *besides* package management. You guys seem to already have a good idea
> of the things we need and I've seen progress towards making portage more
> enterprise-friendly with some of the features planned for the future.
>
> The main thing we need is a powerful portage API that allows complete
> control of portage without using "emerge" at the command line.

Heh, what, current api isn't usable? :)
Yeah, api is an area needing improvement.


> Some form of GUI (and console) tools capable of controlling every aspect
> of any given set of Gentoo servers within an enterprise, from birth
> until death.
Oh... just that. 'k. :)

re: the remote assist/control of a box, I'd wonder what could be
handled via ldap (auth) and use flag...
~harring

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Chris Gianelloni wrote:
| eg. If I want to change the subnet mask or default router on 50 machines
| on my network, I should be able to do so via a simple interface and have
| the work done automatically.

That's why we added c3 and clusterssh to the tree. =)

Donnie
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--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Friday 05 August 2005 03:40, Brian D. Harring wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 05:31:43PM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> It's not an overnight thing, glep19 (stable portage tree) addresses a
> > > chunk of concerns when/if it's implemented, but I'm a bit more
> > > interested in the the other tools people desire alongside.
>
> Offhand, responding to my own snippet, I'd love to know what's going
> on with glep19...
Not much lately I'm afraid:-/ If anyone is willing to help out I guess a mail
to glep19@gentoo.org might get it all (re)started.

--
Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen
Gentoo Linux Security Team
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 10:59:23AM +0200, Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen wrote:
> On Friday 05 August 2005 03:40, Brian D. Harring wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 05:31:43PM -0400, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > It's not an overnight thing, glep19 (stable portage tree) addresses a
> > > > chunk of concerns when/if it's implemented, but I'm a bit more
> > > > interested in the the other tools people desire alongside.
> >
> > Offhand, responding to my own snippet, I'd love to know what's going
> > on with glep19...
> Not much lately I'm afraid:-/ If anyone is willing to help out I guess a mail
> to glep19@gentoo.org might get it all (re)started.
Might be better stating what's needed...
A) people know what they're inadvertantly getting themselves into
B) something might be bloody simple to somebody, and they pick it off
when they may not have been willing to take the time and poke and
find out what's up
C) alternatives might be proposed...

So... spill the beans. :P
~harring

On Friday 05 August 2005 11:07, Brian Harring wrote:
> Might be better stating what's needed...
> A) people know what they're inadvertantly getting themselves into
http://dev.gentoo.org/~jaervosz/glep19.html

> B) something might be bloody simple to somebody, and they pick it off
> when they may not have been willing to take the time and poke and
> find out what's up
> C) alternatives might be proposed...
Of course, but lets see if we can implement something first, otherwise we'll
continue arguing alternatives every ~6 months and never really do anything.

Last time around we at least got a bit going, though admittedly not much.

--
Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen
Gentoo Linux Security Team
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Fri, 2005-08-05 at 01:50 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> | eg. If I want to change the subnet mask or default router on 50 machines
> | on my network, I should be able to do so via a simple interface and have
> | the work done automatically.
>
> That's why we added c3 and clusterssh to the tree. =)

Doing this over ssh leaves a lot to be desired. For one, it requires
ssh keys to be distributed over the entirety of the network. Second it
requires ssh keys for root without a passphrase, or via an agent, to be
always active.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen wrote:
> On Friday 05 August 2005 11:07, Brian Harring wrote:
>
>>Might be better stating what's needed...
>>A) people know what they're inadvertantly getting themselves into
>
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~jaervosz/glep19.html
>
>
>>B) something might be bloody simple to somebody, and they pick it off
>> when they may not have been willing to take the time and poke and
>> find out what's up
>>C) alternatives might be proposed...
>
> Of course, but lets see if we can implement something first, otherwise we'll
> continue arguing alternatives every ~6 months and never really do anything.
>
> Last time around we at least got a bit going, though admittedly not much.

Yeah, we started to get somewhere with it, but then some of us got
caught up in being busier in real life or other things popped up. But I
agree here that we just have to start with something and see where it
goes. Too many times have things been debated and nothing ever
done/tried. I also tend to agree with Chris that to do it completely
right would require a small fork that would work together with Gentoo on
archiving its goals.

It would be nice to come up with a solution without forking, but I just
don't see how it'd be possible and keep things as they should in an
enterprise realm. Things are starting to settle down for me again and I
would like to jumpstart this project again.

--
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key: <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1 4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net

On 04/08/05 14:37 -0500, Brian D. Harring wrote:
<snip>
> Hell, I have yet to see what I would define as a proper solution for
> config manamagent for N gentoo boxes. NFS solution possibly, but that
> seems a bit hackish to me.
>
http://www.infrastructures.org/ is a good place to start.

Devdas Bhagat
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

> This is kinda bloggish, because it's basically a transcription of an
> IRC monologue. My apologies if it's hard to follow... Nonetheless,
> I'm interested in how other developers feel on the topics I bring up
> below.

Though i'm a developer, i'm not a gentoo-developer.

> In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
> enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
> testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
> We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
> backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
> update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
> never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
> of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
> external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
> for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
> the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.

QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
legitimate that?

And yes, Gentoo does not backport patches to older version. But is it
Gentoo's responsibility? If there's a bug in Postgresql 7.x and 8.x, and
the PostgreSQL people only fix it 8.x-series - well: Debian and Redhat
will backport the patches propably. They is a big reason why all the
distrubutions with precompiled packages do that:
- the updates has to be binary compatible with the old one

Gentoo doesn't suffer from that limitation. Gentoo offers ways to
migrate a system from openssl 0.9.6 to openssl 0.9.7 for example. Other
distributions doesn't offer that - although they could with better
package managers.

Also i've had too many SuSE- or Redhat-systems in the past that were
unsupported because RedHat and SuSE decide, to stop supplying updates
for older version of their distribution. So what am i supposed to do in
that case? Updating the whole distribution causing me troubles to
migrate everything to the new version (apache2 instead of apache 1.3, etc.)

With Gentoo, this is usually done as time goes by - though you have to
be very careful sometimes.

Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...

... writing my own packages for - let's say Redhat - takes more time
than writing an ebuild for Gentoo. If you have to maintain a system with
very special software, i would recomm Gentoo.

> I like the idea of Gentoo on alternative arches and in embedded
> environments. Not because I want Sony to start using Gentoo on
> walkmans, but purely because the idea of running Linux on a PDA is
> cool. I'd like Gentoo to be a place where neat things are developed.
> If RH or SuSE (or another for-profit Linux vendor) wants to take some
> of those developments and use them to make a profit, that's fine with
> me. We're over here having fun.

I like Gentoo, since everything is compiled - which offers much
flexibility, that precompiled packages don't offer.

Just some days ago, someone reinstalled a Server where we had PostGreSQL
8.0 running. He chose to install Debian - which offers PostGreSQL 7.4 -
so what did he do? He compiled PostGreSQL 8.0 himself, to be abled to
use our existing database. This will become hell the more packages you
have to compile on you own. Any configure-make-install-like package,
Perl-Module, etc... can be easy installed by using an ebuild.

In addition Gentoo is the only distribution i know, that supports
installing multiple Java-version etc...
A must-have for every real java-developer.

> Also I find it amusing when people say that Gentoo exists for the
> users. I think that is wrong. Gentoo exists for the *developers*.
> It's our playground, and it's the reason we use a live tree rather
> than switching to an actually sane approach. The users are cool
> because they point out bugs, help solve problems on bugzilla, suggest
> enhancements, provide patches, and notify us of package updates.
> Sometimes they become developers. But the truth is that Gentoo sees
> improvement and maintenance in the areas that appeal to the
> developers. And that is why Gentoo exists for the developers first,
> the users second.

by using Gentoo, you learn much about Linux (the Kernel) and all the
nice little software that makes it a usable OS. Somewhere on the net,
there was page about Gentoo and Debian. The conslusion was, that Gentoo
is a great distribution to learn, and Debian is a stable work-horse.
Well, Debian is stable workhorse - as long as you don't have a very
special configuration. AFAIK, Debian doesn't drop support for their
distributions that fast - and they doen't release a new distribution
every few months (like SuSE does).

So i'd say: use Debian, if you have a relativly normal system to
maintain, use Gentoo if you have the time - and never ever use Redhat or
SuSE.


Thx
Sven

Chris Gianelloni posted <1123076347.31550.17.camel@cgianelloni.nuvox.net>,
excerpted below, on Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:39:07 -0400:

>> Administrating a Gentoo system takes time - much time, but ...
>
> This is something that I think most people forget. Running Gentoo makes
> you a Linux Systems Administrator. Sure, you're only being the
> administrator for your machine, which might only have one user, but you're
> the admin. With some of the other distributions, *they* are the admin,
> and you're just a user. They make assumptions for you and limit what you
> can and cannot do (without an enormous amount of work to bypass their
> limits). This is especially apparent in the many cases where users expect
> Gentoo to do everything for them, when it doesn't.

I've found myself emphasizing this same point a number of times. There
are general system users that don't care /what/ they are on. Those are
/just/ users. However, by definition, /Gentoo/ user == sysadmin,
full-stop (period, for those USians not familiar with international
English, "full-stop" seems to me to convey the idea better). You mention
the lack of limits, and Sven mentioned the time it takes, but my emphasis
tends to be on the responsibilities of the job. A good sysadmin invests
the time and energy necessary to keep a healthy system, known vuln and
exploit free, but more than that, "clean" and simple, because (s)he
realizes the consequences of a failure to do so. A good sysadmin knows a
fair amount about how their system works, in ordered to do that. A good
sysadmin enjoys the job, or finds other work.

Gentoo makes being a good sysadmin easy. However, by the same token,
because it assumes that admin is in place, it tends to make being an
ordinary "user" on an admin-less Gentoo system very difficult. Those that
don't like being sysadmins, really should be looking at a distribution
that, as you said, really takes on much of the sysadmin duties as part of
the services provided by the distribution. The best Gentoo user, then,
because being a Gentoo user by definition means being a sysadmin, truly
enjoys both the responsibilities and privileges of system administration.
Again, if that's /not/ the case, one really should be reexamining their
choice of Gentoo, as it's really not the best fit distribution available
for those who'd really rather be doing something other than system
administration.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

>>>In my humble opinion, Gentoo is missing too many points to be an
>>>enterprise Linux. We commit to a live tree. We don't have true QA,
>>>testing or tinderbox. We don't have paid staff, alpha/beta/rc cycles.
>>>We don't really have product lifecycles, since we don't generally
>>>backport fixes to older versions, requiring instead for people to
>>>update to a more recent release. We don't have, and probably will
>>>never be able to offer, support contracts. We support as wide a range
>>>of hardware as the upstream kernel, plus hardware that requires
>>>external drivers; we don't have access to a great deal of the hardware
>>>for which we provide drivers. We understand when real life gets in
>>>the way of bug-fixing, because all our developers are volunteers.
>>
>>QA is a problem. Bugs get fixed, but often they are only fixed in ~x86
>>versions, not in the stable x86 series. For example baselayout: there
>>are lot of ~x86 - miles ahead of that is marked x86. Maintainers think,
>>it's sufficient to only fix the most recent version. How do they
>>legitimate that?
>
> This one is easy. A stable package's ebuild should not change. Period.

I agree with you there - though sometimes, stable ebuilds are changed -
even without changing the version-number.

> To "fix" the stable version, means that a new revision of the latest
> stable version would need to be made, and that revision would need to be
> tested, before it would go to stable. The only real exception to this
> is security bugs. Also, in many cases, the bug in question requires
> changes that are simply not feasible easily in the current stable
> version, but quite easy in the latest version. It really boils down to
> this: If you're having an issue with a package in Gentoo and it is
> fixed in the latest ~arch version, then you should *use* the ~arch
> version (remember, it doesn't mean "unstable" it means "testing") and
> you should report back to the maintainers that this is working for you
> so that they can get it moved into stable quicker. We don't have the
> staff or the time to backport every fix to every stable version.
> Remember that in many cases the "latest stable" version varies between
> architectures.

I chose baselayout for a particular reason. There is baselayout 1.9,
1.11 and 1.12. (i think there was 1.10 too - some time ago - perhaps)

I i reported bugs - as usual - but the bug was fixed for 1.11 or 1.12 (i
can't remeber, it was about a year ago). The problem: the fix was not
backported to 1.9 (which was stable at that time). Since baselayout is a
very important part of Gentoo, i didn't think that it would be a good
idea, to upgrade my x86-version 1.9 to a ~x86-version 1.11. So i would
have expected that such changes would go into a new 1.9-version which
could have become stable after some testing - but they didn't. So
patches the scripts manually - well, and easy task, although i had to
pay attention so they my changes weren't overwritten.