On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 18:10 -0500, David G. Mackay wrote: > On Tue, 2008-03-25 at 14:23 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > > David G. Mackay wrote: > > > > > > Now, if we're talking a system that's handling financial transactions > > > that has to be available 24/7, then it's another situation entirely. > > > > I assumed that the word 'servers' in the subject meant that the services > > mattered to someone... > > To quote the folks from (now defunct) Data General, "Not everything > worth doing is worth doing well." The amount of concern for a web > server that's primarily serving up the family photos to the remote > relatives "matters", but not necessarily much. The services in F9 Beta > "matter", but I'm setting up my test environment in a VM, so if it goes > KFB then I haven't lost anything much. > > > > I've been in shops like that, and am aware of the practices necessary to > > > sustain that. I don't, however, need a disaster recovery plan with a > > > hot backup site for my video and music collection. > > > > If reliability over some long interval isn't important to you, then this > > thread probably isn't very interesting. > > You still don't see the cost/benefit analysis that I'm applying to a > home server. I can tolerate some downtime, but it's nice to have a > distro with a longer life cycle so that I don't have to do major > upgrades to my server every six to nine months just to keep it up to > date. My primary consideration there would be security updates, and > yes, I realize that I could skip releases with Fedora without losing the > security updates. By the same token, a problem in F7 isn't likely to > get the same level of response as one in F8. > > Dave > > I'm going to put my 2c in and say if you want a server that is stable, doesn't need constant updating, can be changed without rebooting (if you're clever), and can get easy, continuous support throughout the ages, then go FreeBSD and be done with it. The lists are informative and will help no matter what, and I've run a web server, dns, and more on a little shitbox which won't run anything else for 27 days without rebooting and making fairly major changes in the process. Its only a pII with a 3Gb drive. I'll eventually use it as a squid box and maybe mail server unless I get new hardware. I believe you use the right tools for the right job- Fedora CAN be used as a server, but you have to ask: should you? FreeBSD is primarily designed as a server, and most ISP's and other services use it for its reliability. I know of a server that was up for over 3 years without stopping running FreeBSD. I believe it's also possible to hot swap kernels on FreeBSD- something I wouldn't try with linux. Linux is great for desktop apps and can be used for server solutions, but it was designed for desktop use- so thats its strong point. That said FreeBSD or any other Unix system is a lot harder to setup as a desktop system, but it can be done too. Well, I've had my rant... I feel happier now. I'm off...
