Re: Gentoo for production DB server?

Christine Desmuke wrote:
> At the risk of starting a flame-war, I'd like some more details on the
> use of Gentoo Linux for a production PostgreSQL server. There have been
> a couple of comments lately that it is not such a great idea; does
> anyone have specific experience they'd be willing to share?

We were using Gentoo until recently on production servers, and still do
on some development machines. I've never had a problem with it, and
would recommend it if you know what you're doing; only upgrade packages
when you really need to, don't do emerge -u world/system, preferably
perform updates on an exact mirror, test well, then switch servers,
and sync up.
If you treat it kindly, Gentoo will treat you kindly.
We've now switched to RHEL3 (management decision - for support!),
which IMHO is an admin nightmare (but thats just RPM's for you).
We had to download and compile several important packages manually,
the supplied PostgreSQL was very out of date, and PHP didn't even
have PostgreSQL support builtin.
You also don't have to install tons of unused crap, like X11.

Provided you don't have management breathing down your neck about
operating system support, and you know your way around a Linux system
without a mouse, then I'd heartly recommend Gentoo.

--
Mark Gibson <gibsonm |AT| cromwell |DOT| co |DOT| uk>
Web Developer & Database Admin
Cromwell Tools Ltd.
Leicester, England.