Re: CentOS binary packages, etc.

[Jason Bacon <bacon4000%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello Youssef,

Thanks for the heads-up, but I don't think this is a major issue. This 
is in fact why I'm leaning toward doing the bulk builds on a pristine 
CentoOS minimal installation rather than a production system with many 
Yum packages installed.

I've actually run into leakage issues with only a few packages in the 6 
years I've been using pkgsrc on our CentOS clusters.  That's enough to 
dissuade me from sharing binary packages built on our clusters with the 
world, but I think those built on a pristine system will be very safe 
and portable.  I've worked around leakage issues in the past by simply 
building a package on another system.

It may be necessary to use the following in mk.conf to ensure that all 
the dependencies are installed via pkgsrc and Yum versions are not used 
instead:

PREFER_NATIVE=          no
PREFER_PKGSRC=          yes

My auto-pkgsrc-setup script ensures this:

    http://www.acadix.biz/pkgsrc.php

I've been refining it for years and lately I have not had any issues 
beyond the occasional broken package.

Regards,

    Jason

On 08/29/16 09:26, Youssef GHORBAL wrote:
> Hello Jason,
>
> 	I was considering doing the same a while back. But I came across a rather big issue regarding pkgsrc and Linux. You can see the related topic here :
> 	https://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-users/2010/05/19/msg012213.html
>
> 	I don’t think that things changed much in that area since then (on both sides)
>
> Youssef Ghorbal
> -------------------------
> > On 29 Aug 2016, at 16:11, Jason Bacon <bacon4000%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:
> >
> >
> > FYI:
> >
> > I've gotten clearance to set up a pkgsrc mirror at UW -- Milwaukee.  It will be housed in our new data center with a fast Internet2 connection.
> >
> > In addition to the standard pkgsrc contents, I plan to start doing bulk builds for Enterprise Linux (EL6: RHEL, CentOS, etc.)
> >
> > My goal is to make pkgsrc more accessible to the scientific research community, especially large HPC clusters.  I've been raising awareness of pkgsrc in the HPC community, but I think the ability to use pkgin on EL will make it attractive enough to spur wide adoption (in addition to speeding up my own software deployments).
> >
> > I found the following page, which appears to contain a rather Old package set from 2014:
> >
> >     https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/
> >
> > 1)    Is anyone out there is presently working on bulk builds for EL?  If so, I would love to coordinate with you so we don't waste our time on duplicated effort.
> >
> > 2)    Roughly how long does it take to do a bulk build of the entire tree on a single high-end server?  I was thinking of doing builds on one of our production clusters, but I'm leaning against it due to some issues with leakage of Yum packages into certain builds.  I think it would be safer to do the builds on a dedicated server with a minimal CentOS installation.
> >
> > I'm going to apologize in advance right now for the long stretches that I'll be incognito.  We're severely understaffed and there will be stretches of weeks at a time that I can't work on this, but I *am* moving forward as time permits.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >     Jason
> >
> > --
> >
> > Those who spend their lives in the shallows see their whole world in turmoil
> > every time the wind blows.
> >
> > Those who explore the depths see only ripples at the surface of an otherwise
> > serene world.


--

Those who spend their lives in the shallows see their whole world in turmoil
every time the wind blows.

Those who explore the depths see only ripples at the surface of an otherwise
serene world.