On Thursday 27 December 2007 10:07:00 Henning Brauer wrote: > * STeve Andre' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-12-27 15:43]: > > On Thursday 27 December 2007 09:17:37 new_guy wrote: > > > I would like to install OpenBSD *once* and keep it patched and secured > > > for many years there after (5 - 7 years) in a production environment. > > > Would it be feasible to get a snapshot today and follow -current for > > > many years w/o having to reinstall? Basically, this approach would skip > > > -stable and -release and always be -current. I understand the > > > implications of being current and that things might change and break > > > and may need re-configuring on occasion. I'm OK with that... I just > > > don't want to reinstall a -release every year... although I'll still > > > buy CDs as they are released to support the project. > > that will work fine as long as you keep an eye on current.html and > maybe source-changes, it is what many of us do. > > > There are two problems with what you are talking about. The first is > > that by its vary nature -current is a moving target, and there could be > > a time when upgrading to the latest -current for a security fix might > > introduce some new feature which you don't want. > > why wouldn't you want a new feature? > we're being extremely careful to not break existing behaviour wherever > possible. of course, that is not always possible, but exceptions are > rare and well documented.
I didn't express that well enough, I guess. How about a change, such as disks formerly showing up as wd but now sd? By problem, I mean something that has to be dealt with, not just insurmountable ones. > > > The second problem are flag days, when something has changed such > > that you almost certainly want to reinstall the OS. The move from > > a.out to ELF binary format is a good example of that. > > ah yeah, and that happens every second week. > reality check: how often does that happen really? > the last "real" flag day on i386 was the a.out -> ELF move. > When was that? 3.3 I think. almost 5 years ago. Perhaps I'm wrong here, but I thought about every other release there was a change that was a flag day. I see that the upgrade faq doesn't have a history so I'd have to dig for it. Still, my point was they do happen from time to time so the idea of living on -current won't always work. As I read his posting, new_guy is getting the concepts down. Though they are few, flag days still need to be understood. --STeve Andre'
