Posts tagged sysadmin


Genkernel in 2023

:: gentoo, kernel, linux, sysadmin, system, tutorial

By: Maciej Barć

I really wanted to look into the new kernel building solutions for Gentoo and maybe migrate to dracut, but last time I tried, ~1.5 years ago, the initreamfs was now working for me.

And now in 2023 I’m still running genkernel for my personal boxes as well as other servers running Gentoo.

I guess some short term solutions really become defined tools :P

So this is how I rebuild my kernel nowadays:

  1. Copy old config

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    cd /usr/src
    cp linux-6.1.38-gentoo/.config linux-6.1.41-gentoo/
    
  2. Remove old kernel build directories

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    rm -r linux-6.1.31-gentoo
    
  3. Run initial preparation

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    ( eselect kernel set 1 && cd /usr/src/linux && make olddefconfig )
    
  4. Call genkernel

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    genkernel                                                       \
        --no-menuconfig                                             \
        --no-clean                                                  \
        --no-clear-cachedir                                         \
        --no-cleanup                                                \
        --no-mrproper                                               \
        --lvm                                                       \
        --luks                                                      \
        --mdadm                                                     \
        --nfs                                                       \
        --kernel-localversion="-$(hostname)-$(date '+%Y.%m.%d')"    \
        all
    
  5. Rebuild the modules

    If in your /etc/genkernel.conf you have MODULEREBUILD turned off, then also call emerge:

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    emerge -1 @module-rebuild
    

Portage system replication

:: gentoo, portage, sysadmin, system

By: Maciej Barć

Intro

Backing up using this method takes a lot less space - ~60MB (without distfiles) and can be restored on almost any system (running portage) and tweaked afterwards for, say, CPU architecture. I've created a a short script with similar method in here.

What we need

  • ebuild repositories are installed with git
  • distfiles (those might be gone when we want to replicate)

Backup

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# System info
emerge --info > info.txt

# Portage tree
cp -Lr /etc/portage .

# Portage layout
tree -a -L 2 /etc/portage > layout.txt

# Packages in @world
cp /var/lib/portage/world .

# Installed sets
cp /var/lib/portage/world_sets .

# Installed packages (with versions)
qlist --installed --nocolor --umap > qlist-use.txt
qlist --installed --nocolor --verbose > qlist-ver.txt

# Distfiles
cp -rv "$(portageq envvar DISTDIR)" distfiles

# Ebuild database
cp -r /var/db/pkg pkgdb

Restoration

To faithfully restore the system perform those actions as root

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# Copy the portage tree to /etc
rm -dr /etc/portage
cp -r portage /etc/portage

# Checkout the gentoo repo to a commit specified in info.txt
cd "$(portageq get_repo_path / gentoo)"
git checkout # <commit ID>

# Copy distfiles
cp -r distfiles/* "$(portageq envvar DISTDIR)"/

# Fake-install @world and sets
cp world /var/lib/portage/world
cp world_sets /var/lib/portage/world_sets

# Emerge the exact packages from qlist-ver.txt
emerge --keep-going=y -1Oav $(sed 's/^/=/' qlist-ver.txt)