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Build From Source vs. Packages?
mod_critical asks: "I am a student at the University of Minnesota and I work with a professor performing research and managing more than ten Linux based servers. When it comes to installing services on these machines I am a die-hard build-from-source fanatic, while the professor I work with prefers to install and maintain everything from packages. I want to know what Slashdot readers tend to think is the best way to do things. How you feel about the ease and simplicity of installing and maintaining packaged programs versus the optimization and control that can be achieved by building from source? What are your experiences?"
If you are working for someone else, maintaining servers that are intended for peforming specific tasks, then I think the best solution is to do whatever is most efficient at performing those tasks. If you really don't need the peformance gains brought by compiling from source (and you probably don't) and it's going to take you a long time to do the compiling, time that could be better spend actually doing the research, then it's not worth your effort. If however the compiling doesn't affect the user's ability to be productive and that is what you as sysadmin are most comfortable with, then it seems reasonable that you should be able to maintain the boxes however you like.
Speaking of RedHat doing something weird... RedHat managed to _rename_ p_pptr to parent in task_struct in the kernel. How did they manage to get away with something like that? If there are custom kernel modules that happen to want to use p_pptr, then everything breaks!
In short: I have to agree--I do a bit of both, too.
The main thing I encounter that keeps me from using them all the time is the need for specific add-ons that are available as part of packages but are available when rolling-my-own.
As an aside, there are certain bits that I just prefer to compile myself for any number of reasons
That said, there are other bits of software that are pretty generic items that the packages make *trivially* easy to work with, and where compiling those same things from scratch--particularly on older hardware--makes you get a bit long-in-the-tooth waiting for the compile to return.
To me, this is truly one of the ultimate beauties of open source: you're not stuck with pre-built, but you can leverage it when it makes sense.
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Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent. Not at this juncture.
Then, on the other machines, I install from the binaries.
This allows me to test the installs first, resolve any problems, etc.
Furthermore, to speed up the process, several machines run DISTCC and are used as clients of the compile server.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You don't have to wait days to get a working Gentoo system. With the GRP CDs you can have a working system up and running in a few hours. It's still going to take more time than Fedora or SuSE, but it will be optimized more for your platform with the option of recompiling for further optimization. That's how I setup Gentoo on my laptop as it's hideously slow. Over time it's had almost everything recompiled a piece at a time, but I didn't have to wait for it to do everything from glibc up at once.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Sometimes the exact opposite is true, especially in terms of "community support". For instance, mod_perl, which for some reason Red Hat decided to ship a very early version. The typical response on the mailing lists for mod_perl or any other alpha/beta package RH included usually goes "try it from source, then email us" (that's after someone submits a reasonably complete bug report).
Let's not forget the GCC fiasco and probably dozens of other examples where RH decided to "lead the pack" in terms of version numbers but not stability.
Of course, then there's Debian woody, living in circa-2001 land.
BUT
The really great thing is how well it wears. I've a RH8, RH9 installation that have lots of other bits & bobs installed, mainly from tgz's I've pulled down & built. Its an arseabout, and both boxes are cluttered with stuff - and as soon as you go off piste with an installed package, you're on your own.
OTOH I also have a couple of gentoo installations, and for nearly everything I want, I can just 'emerge xyz' and presto, its there. It was a pain getting it installed, but now its there it is really, really good. Also upgrading it was piss easy too.
If only I could get portage/emerge for redhat...