On Sun, Nov 11, 2001 at 10:30:56AM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: > On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 03:32:29AM +1100, Jason Lim wrote: > > We run unstable on our production servers. That means we must be very > > vigilant in making sure no one else has had a problem. We download > > the updates, and install them a day or two later after other people > > have tested it and made sure it doesn't totally destroy the box. The > > reason we run unstable is because quite a few times we've needed new > > software, and it just wasn't in stable. > > another good idea is to install the same packages that your server > requires on another machine (e.g. a development box or your > workstation). then test every upgrade on that box before doing it on > your production server. if the upgrade works smoothly on the workstation > then it's probably OK to run on the production server. if not, then wait > a few days and run a test upgrade again. > > once you've done this a few times, you get a feel for what kinds of > problems to look out for, what to keep an eye on during & after the > upgrade.
... > in my experience, there is far less risk in upgrading regularly & often > than there is in upgrading only when there is a new stable release. you > get small incremental changes rather than one enormous change...one > advantage of this is that if something does go wrong, it's generally > only one or two problems at a time, which is much easier to deal with > than dozens or hundreds of simultaneous problems. ... > here's a good rule of thumb for deciding whether to run unstable: > > if you are highly skilled and you need the new versions in unstable then > it's worth the risk to run unstable. > > if not, then stick to stable. most packages in unstable can easily be > recompiled for stable (depending on which dependancies you also have to > recompile for stable...if there's too many, then it becomes more work > and more risk to recompile than it is to just upgrade to unstable) Yes, I can second that. Excepting only that if you are skilled enough to recompile unstable source on stable you are probably more than skilled enough to run vanilla unstable. :-) We typically upgrade all our development machines first. For the most part, that catches most of the issues. -- Christopher F. Miller, Publisher [EMAIL PROTECTED] MaineStreet Communications, Inc 208 Portland Road, Gray, ME 04039 1.207.657.5078 http://www.maine.com/ Content/site management, online commerce, internet integration, Debian linux -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
