At 03:24 PM 5/17/04 -0400, Jeremy Brown wrote: >Mike Bartman wrote: > >>I've gotten it, installed it, and am looking it over, but if support for >>keeping it secure is going to go away, and require an upgrade to a new >>version every few months, it's not going to cut it either. >> >> >There's always fedoralegacy.org, which provides updates for 1.5 years (3 >version cycles). Thank you. I saw some info about that later on, and went and checked the site. It looks good. Upgrading every year or 2 shouldn't be a major problem. I won't miss new features much...I don't need a lot of capability on my server system...but security patches are important. Speaking of which, what tricks do people have for easing an "upgrade" that's done by installing a fresh copy of a newer system? Upgrade installs often only work for adjacent, or almost adjacent, versions. If you skip a few, you usually need a fresh install, and trying to collect all the setups, config files, and other customizations can be a real PITA if you aren't anal about how you keep records and save copies of everything you modify over time. You usually have to do a lot of manual work to use the old setup info with the latest versions, but making sure you didn't miss anything before you wipe the old setup is nice. Having to dig it out of backups takes time. I've got /home on a separate partition that I don't need to mess with when re-installing (it's worked for a couple of RHL upgrades so far anyway), so the stuff that needs carrying over is mostly system setups (DNS configs, sendmail setup, user account info, etc.). It can be saved in the /home tree for reference in setting up the new system once it's up and running, but how to get all the required stuff, without any critical omissions, is a potential problem. Anything that will run over a given install, compare RPMs with the actual installed stuff and tell you what it looks like has been changed, without complaining about every executable that might have been upgraded by a patch or whatever, and which won't miss config files that weren't included in the RPM? Some other trick? -- Mike Bartman ========================================================================== The Boulder Pledge: "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited email message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community." ==========================================================================
