Advice about packages

Advice about packages

[Phillip Ames]

Hi,
I'm relatively new to using Linux on a daily basis and I was looking for
some information about what the "trends" are for production Linux
machines.  I installed RedHat 9, and have mucked about with rpm and
thought that packages were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
However, in the course of my reading and playing I've noticed that many
places recommend that the binary executables actually be compiled by
your machine (with all its kernel options, etc.) which is sensible.
Everything is well when I ./configure them and then "make install" but
if there is an update to a particular product it seems very inconvenient
to upgrade versions.  An example is the Apache httpd server - 1.3.xx
stores its served files in /var/www/html/ and the actual httpd daemon in
/usr/bin.  Apache 2, however, sets the DocumentRoot as
/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ and the binaries in /usr/local/apache2/bin/.
I know it's just a simple matter of changing the DocumentRoot entry in
the httpd.conf file for served documents but is there a better/easier
way to go about upgrading the binaries?  Or is the de facto standard to
simply run ./configure --with-prefix=/usr/bin?  Any advice would be
appreciated.  Thanks,


-Phil


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Re: Advice about packages

[James Miller (office)]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Phillip Ames wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm relatively new to using Linux on a daily basis and I was looking for
> some information about what the "trends" are for production Linux
> machines.  I installed RedHat 9, and have mucked about with rpm and
> thought that packages were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
> However, in the course of my reading and playing I've noticed that many
> places recommend that the binary executables actually be compiled by
> your machine (with all its kernel options, etc.) which is sensible.
> Everything is well when I ./configure them and then "make install" but
> if there is an update to a particular product it seems very inconvenient
> to upgrade versions.  An example is the Apache httpd server - 1.3.xx
> stores its served files in /var/www/html/ and the actual httpd daemon in
> /usr/bin.  Apache 2, however, sets the DocumentRoot as
> /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ and the binaries in /usr/local/apache2/bin/.
> I know it's just a simple matter of changing the DocumentRoot entry in
> the httpd.conf file for served documents but is there a better/easier
> way to go about upgrading the binaries?  Or is the de facto standard to
> simply run ./configure --with-prefix=/usr/bin?  Any advice would be
> appreciated.  Thanks,
>
I'm prolly even newer than you to running Linux on a daily basis.  But I
wonder if, based on your questions, you might not want to have a look at
Gentoo?  It has some sort of scripting system that builds packages on the
local machine after downloading them from an up-to-date repository of
source packages.  It's supposed to resolve dependencies and such, much
like Debian's apt-get.  Sort of a cross between apt-get and compiling from
source, if I understand correctly.  You download a package list when you
get a base system installed, then issue certain commands ("emerge
mozilla-browser" - something like that) and it retrieves the source and
any dependency sources it may have that are not on your system, and
compiles them for you (you can input options to the compile process
someplace, I think).  Hefty system resources (lots of RAM, fast processor)
seems sort of a prerequisite - at least if you want to get all this done
within reasonable time limits. They say it's the greatest thing since
sliced butter . . . ok, sliced bread. whatever.

James
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Re: Advice about packages

[Nathan Clayton]

Phillip Ames wrote:

>Hi,
>I'm relatively new to using Linux on a daily basis and I was looking for
>some information about what the "trends" are for production Linux
>machines.  I installed RedHat 9, and have mucked about with rpm and
>thought that packages were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
>However, in the course of my reading and playing I've noticed that many
>places recommend that the binary executables actually be compiled by
>your machine (with all its kernel options, etc.) which is sensible.
>Everything is well when I ./configure them and then "make install" but
>if there is an update to a particular product it seems very inconvenient
>to upgrade versions.  An example is the Apache httpd server - 1.3.xx
>stores its served files in /var/www/html/ and the actual httpd daemon in
>/usr/bin.  Apache 2, however, sets the DocumentRoot as
>/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/ and the binaries in /usr/local/apache2/bin/.
>I know it's just a simple matter of changing the DocumentRoot entry in
>the httpd.conf file for served documents but is there a better/easier
>way to go about upgrading the binaries?  Or is the de facto standard to
>simply run ./configure --with-prefix=/usr/bin?  Any advice would be
>appreciated.  Thanks,
>
>
>-Phil
>
>  
>
Ok, first off, are you using this for just a desktop? If that's the 
case, you really don't need to compile everything for your computer. 
While there will be a bit of a preformance hit, it really won't be too 
large, and almost negligible when compared to the processing speeds of 
modern computers. For the most part nowdays, you will only really need 
to compile something if: your distribution doesn't support it and 
there's no RPM/DEB files for it, there are some kernel modules which you 
need but aren't in your distribution's source tree, you want to try to 
eke out the most preformance possible, or you need to dsable some 
features for security reasons.

My suggestion would be to just be lazy and let the package manager deal 
with the big stuff that can be a total pain (like X, KDE, or GNOME), and 
just compile the little things that you need to customize your system 
(i.e. the version of Xine with lib-decss support built in :). Granted 
you won't be at the bleeding edge of things, but that's never stable, 
and if this is your desktop or production system you can easily loose 
data (I've had this happen, and it really sucks). Keep your system up to 
date with whatever update tool Redhat provides (I can't remember, I use 
SuSE).

Nathan

-- 
"Man mufl nicht grofl sein, um grofl zu sein."
http://www.claytondevelopment.com


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