Tim: >> For those updating a system with quite a few things already on it, it's >> a common recommendation to first uninstall some of the larger things, >> like OpenOffice.org. Sam Varshavchik: > That's not a valid excuse. While I agree it's not a wonderful thing to have to do, the fact is that doing an upgrade involves a lot of work. Minimising the workload, beforehand, will lessen the time it takes to do its thing. > I have my own packaging tool I use for managing my own software. I > got so sick and tired of rpm, last year, that I wrote my own, to > manage by own code. I can import rpm dependencies into my own > database (which will NEVER get corrupted like rpm regularly does, see > below). It takes me only a minute or two, to suck out all > dependencies out of rpm, via perl-RPM2. And, on a beat up old Celeron > 500, it takes only another three minutes to reconcile RPM's > dependencies against mine's, and identify any conflicts. There is no > reason, whatsoever, that this crap should take an hour to figure out, > in anaconda. If you do avoid their own tools, you are on you own to resolve problems. Though, having said that, I'm sure there would be people interested in a better system. You're not the only one who's been put off by the time involved in an upgrade, as well as the potential problems. The last time I tried an upgrade was around the Red Hat 6 or 7 era, and that didn't take a huge amount of time to complete (longer than a fresh install, though), but it did have some problems, post install. There are quite a few horror stories on this list about how badly that worked with Fedora, and how long, too. > The real ugly truth here is that the upgrade path in anaconda is being > neglected for commercial reasons. I don't know if I'd come to that conclusion. I could easily believe that someone thinks it's just too hard to do well. I'm less inclined to believe that there's an ulterior motive behind it. > If the 800lb gorilla I deal with, daily, is a typical RHAS licensee -- and I > have no reason to think that they're not -- most RHAS customers do not > upgrade their servers. The servers are all network clients, and RHAS > gets upgraded on the servers just by loading a new install image. I think you'll find a lot of people don't upgrade their servers. It's a big task, that involves more than just loading software. There's custom configurations that took a long time to get where they wanted them to be, plus the data. I still run FC4 on my servers. I've tried out FC5 and FC6 on the clients, haven't seen a great motivating factor to convince me it's worth all the hard work in upgrading the server. Plus the fact that I see more problems with the two of them than I've resolved with FC4. For me, it probably isn't going to be an upgrade of the server. I'll probably set up a new server, and transfer data over once it's been running for a while without falling over. -- Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
