[rescue] Bare box installs

[Tom Manos]

Lots of good info from several folks. My comments:

For a server system, where you're installing basic services (OS, Apache,
sendmail, pop, imap, ad infinitum, working in Linux from a bare system can
work, although I don't do it anymore.

I submit, however, that with the sheer volume of "stuff" required to provide
today's services, that for any system with lots of things running, it gets to
be "too hard", and also my comment that you stand a chance at understanding
everything likely no longer applies. There is just too much for one mind to
manage, unless that's all you do.

In the olden days, source for AT&T Unix was hard to come by, but looking
through the source for Seventh Edition is an incredible experience. Here you
actually do have a chance to understand, in detail, the _entire_ system:
kernel, daemons, configuration, and applications. I still say that unless you
are a very special person indeed, that will not happen today, unless you pare
a Linux system down to something that compares to an old system. As a trivial
example, compare the sources for today's ls(1) with the one from 7th edition.
Or better, compare the kernel sources.

Still, my hat's off to those of you who compile the whole system from scratch.
Probably too much work for me for a system I actually need to use, and one
that I need to upgrade regularly. One did not have to do that in the old days
when there were few hackers, no Internet, and few upgrades available. You
might have gotten an update to sendmail or bnews or elm or emacs a couple of
times a year, but that was manageable. Nothing like today.

Fun discussion, thanks for the follow-ups!

Tom