Fedora Core brevity vs server upgrades

hi y'all

Oh I know some people might say you have no business running servers on
Fedora because the Cores are so short lived and yes, it's not an ideal
position but sometimes you have to just grin and bear it. ...hard to
beat for the money huh?

Well, I would like some views on this, if you just want to say don't run
fc then please just don't respond k? What we have here is a new core
coming out bout every six months and then probably a year and it's in
legacy. This seems to be the pattern. Now then you experienced hands
w/this have seen what happens as soon as it is released from testing. I
have not that much experience there.

I saw remarks by Alexander Dalloz and others whom I respect all greatly.
They seemed to instill in me that just because the core is released does
not mean that there are above avg problems w/it right then. The main
public (not just the testers) get a hold of it and bugzilla gets it's
share of activity. Given all this, when you think is ideal time to
upgrade??? Do it right away...wait a couple months...when???

I don't have a bench test machine anymore...and I have 3 fedora boxes 2
servers synced together backing each others availability, and another
box also running fc3 that mainly holds backups for the 3 fedora boxes
and 2 windows and also will be the box I want to settle in as my pc,
for doing dev. work and what not.

thx for listening

john rose

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rado wrote:
> hi y'all
>
> Oh I know some people might say you have no business running servers on
> Fedora because the Cores are so short lived and yes, it's not an ideal
> position but sometimes you have to just grin and bear it. ...hard to
> beat for the money huh?

I'm running several FC3 machines in production, primarily as MX servers
running Sendmail, ClamAV, and SpamAssassin. They're very stable. I'll
upgrade them to FC4 about two to three weeks after the first big batch
of updates comes out for FC4 stable.

I feel a bit differently about some of our app servers that have more
complicated setups, not due to stability but to the fact that we've done
a poor job of documenting ongoing changes, so rebuilding them from
scratch would be a very unpleasant few days. They'll stay on RHES for now.

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On Tuesday 26 April 2005 18:32, rado wrote:

>
> I saw remarks by Alexander Dalloz and others whom I respect all
> greatly. They seemed to instill in me that just because the core
> is released does not mean that there are above avg problems w/it
> right then. The main public (not just the testers) get a hold of
> it and bugzilla gets it's share of activity. Given all this, when
> you think is ideal time to upgrade??? Do it right away...wait a
> couple months...when???
>

I don't think there's a "one size fits all" answer to your question.
The best suggestion I can give you is to follow a release right
from the start. That is, jump in to the testing phase at some
point with a spare computer, follow the discussion on the
fedora-test list and poke at the system to see what problems you
can find. This will give you a good feeling for quality of the
software. At some point, probably after the "official release"
you'll be comfortable with the system enough to know if it's ready
for your own "production" usage.

Regards, Mike Klinke


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rado wrote:
> hi y'all
>
> Oh I know some people might say you have no business running servers on
> Fedora because the Cores are so short lived and yes, it's not an ideal
> position but sometimes you have to just grin and bear it. ...hard to
> beat for the money huh?
>
> Well, I would like some views on this, if you just want to say don't run
> fc then please just don't respond k? What we have here is a new core
> coming out bout every six months and then probably a year and it's in
> legacy. This seems to be the pattern. Now then you experienced hands
> w/this have seen what happens as soon as it is released from testing. I
> have not that much experience there.
>
> I saw remarks by Alexander Dalloz and others whom I respect all greatly.
> They seemed to instill in me that just because the core is released does
> not mean that there are above avg problems w/it right then. The main
> public (not just the testers) get a hold of it and bugzilla gets it's
> share of activity. Given all this, when you think is ideal time to
> upgrade??? Do it right away...wait a couple months...when???
>
> I don't have a bench test machine anymore...and I have 3 fedora boxes 2
> servers synced together backing each others availability, and another
> box also running fc3 that mainly holds backups for the 3 fedora boxes
> and 2 windows and also will be the box I want to settle in as my pc,
> for doing dev. work and what not.

I'd not use FC on a server.

I maintain several machines, some running Debian, a couple run FC3.

I maintain the software remotely - where remotely varies from across the
LAN to via dialup Internet.

apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a
local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror,
and the initial configuration is done at install time.

I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I
_could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to
control when updates go in.

By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such
as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there
are few locations further away than those.

I see an enormous volume of updates for FC. I've not checked on what
they fix, but I suspect they're mostly not security-related.

I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd be
perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server breaks
then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.

If you want a Red Hat-based solution then look at the free download
versions of RH's Enterprise Linux. I have not used one, but I might. I
have been downloading the source updates, and they're relatively few as
compared with FC.

I don't think Debian is a good solution atm: the stable version is about
as ancient as RHL 7.3, and the next stable version is very late. I'm
running Sarge (the next Stable version), but there are hazards and
worries about crucial software (eg firewall, vpn) updates breaking the
systems and locking me out.

Between FC3 and EL there is the Debian-based Ubuntu. I'm running that
too, and he volume of updates is low - security only, and only for a
subset of what's available. The release cycle is six months - October
and April, and the support is (I think) eighteen months or so.





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John

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On Thu, 2005-04-28 at 13:32 +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
> I'd not use FC on a server.
>
> I maintain several machines, some running Debian, a couple run FC3.
>
> I maintain the software remotely - where remotely varies from across the
> LAN to via dialup Internet.
>
> apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a
> local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror,
> and the initial configuration is done at install time.
>
> I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I
> _could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to
> control when updates go in.
>
> By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such
> as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there
> are few locations further away than those.

It's very easy to make yum use a local mirror. I do this both at home at
at work. Just point each repo at your local mirror using the "baseurl"
directive in your yum repository configuration instead of using the
default mirrorlist.

> I see an enormous volume of updates for FC. I've not checked on what
> they fix, but I suspect they're mostly not security-related.

I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
not really needed on servers.

> I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd be
> perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server breaks
> then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.

Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
"broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
day after.

> If you want a Red Hat-based solution then look at the free download
> versions of RH's Enterprise Linux. I have not used one, but I might. I
> have been downloading the source updates, and they're relatively few as
> compared with FC.

Agreed. Centos looks a good bet.

Paul.
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Paul Howarth wrote:

>>apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a
>>local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror,
>>and the initial configuration is done at install time.
>>
>>I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I
>>_could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to
>>control when updates go in.
>>
>>By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such
>>as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there
>>are few locations further away than those.
>
>
> It's very easy to make yum use a local mirror. I do this both at home at
> at work. Just point each repo at your local mirror using the "baseurl"
> directive in your yum repository configuration instead of using the
> default mirrorlist.

It may be "very easy" but only when you know how. I've installed a few
Debian systems, and it's impossible to avoid the opportunity to choose a
local mirror.

First, it asks "What country..." and that promptly weeds out .fi, .il,
..ru and .mx.

In contrast, nothing in FC asked me what to use, and I've not seen any
documentation on the topic. Nor, it happens, do I know a near-by mirror.

It seems some of the mirrors used by Yum are beorkn - I often get 404
errors.

I'm not a fan on Yum.


>
>
>>I see an enormous volume of updates for FC. I've not checked on what
>>they fix, but I suspect they're mostly not security-related.
>
>
> I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
> not really needed on servers.

I note that there have been several kernel updates, and that he latest
is broken (on my laptop it doesn't shut down, gets an oops instead). Not
good for transporting.


>
>
>>I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd be
>>perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server breaks
>>then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.
>
>
> Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
> "broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
> NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
> day after.

This justifies my hands-on update policy.

The option to log software updates would be good - email (preferably to
another box) and a printed report are good options.


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John

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On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 07:54 +0800, John Summerfied wrote:
> Paul Howarth wrote:
>
> >>apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a
> >>local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror,
> >>and the initial configuration is done at install time.
> >>
> >>I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I
> >>_could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to
> >>control when updates go in.
> >>
> >>By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such
> >>as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there
> >>are few locations further away than those.
> >
> >
> > It's very easy to make yum use a local mirror. I do this both at home at
> > at work. Just point each repo at your local mirror using the "baseurl"
> > directive in your yum repository configuration instead of using the
> > default mirrorlist.
>
> It may be "very easy" but only when you know how. I've installed a few
> Debian systems, and it's impossible to avoid the opportunity to choose a
> local mirror.
>
> First, it asks "What country..." and that promptly weeds out .fi, .il,
> .ru and .mx.
>
> In contrast, nothing in FC asked me what to use, and I've not seen any
> documentation on the topic. Nor, it happens, do I know a near-by mirror.
>
> It seems some of the mirrors used by Yum are beorkn - I often get 404
> errors.
>
> I'm not a fan on Yum.

You can find a list of mirrors organised geographically at:
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html

An example of how to set up your own mirrorlist:
http://fedoranews.org/tchung/yum-mirrorlist/

The Fedora installer, in contrast to Debian's, asks as few questions as
it can reasonably get away with. For some people this is an advantage,
and for others it's a disadvantage.

Cheers, Paul.
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John Summerfied wrote:

> It may be "very easy" but only when you know how. I've installed a few
> Debian systems, and it's impossible to avoid the opportunity to choose
> a local mirror.
>
> First, it asks "What country..." and that promptly weeds out .fi,
> .il, .ru and .mx.
>
> In contrast, nothing in FC asked me what to use, and I've not seen any
> documentation on the topic. Nor, it happens, do I know a near-by mirror.
>
> It seems some of the mirrors used by Yum are beorkn - I often get 404
> errors.
>
> I'm not a fan on Yum.
>
It's not a yum related problem. If the server is incomplete , it means
that apt , yum and any other other app that does something like yum/apt
do , they'll have issues with broken mirrors.
There's no easy way to fix this. If you find one , please post it ,
since keeping several mirrors in synch is certainly something very
difficult, specially when you dont have control over them.

>> I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
>> not really needed on servers.
>
>
> I note that there have been several kernel updates, and that he latest
> is broken (on my laptop it doesn't shut down, gets an oops instead).
> Not good for transporting.
>
For a good description of the updates , subscribe to
fedora-announce-list. Usually the security updates are listed with the
[SECURITY] tag in the subject , but sometimes a security update goes by
without any special mention besides the entry in the changelog saying
something like "Fixed CAN #.... ".

>
>>> I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd
>>> be perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server
>>> breaks then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
>> "broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
>> NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
>> day after.
>
>
> This justifies my hands-on update policy.
>
> The option to log software updates would be good - email (preferably
> to another box) and a printed report are good options.

Then the approach you need is something different: configure your
machines to download from a local mirror. And only put in that mirror
the packages that you have already tested on your network.

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Pedro Fernandes Macedo wrote:

>>
>> I'm not a fan on Yum.
>>
> It's not a yum related problem. If the server is incomplete , it means
> that apt , yum and any other other app that does something like yum/apt
> do , they'll have issues with broken mirrors.
> There's no easy way to fix this. If you find one , please post it ,

Drop unreliable mirrors. It happens often enough that they should be
identifiable.

Update lists mirrors; it seems that Yum downloads a fresh list each time
(yuck, I'd rather see the list in an rpm that's updated as needed), so
that should be a quick fix. Once a mirror fixes its problems, relist it.

> since keeping several mirrors in synch is certainly something very
> difficult, specially when you dont have control over them.
>
>>> I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
>>> not really needed on servers.
>>
>>
>>
>> I note that there have been several kernel updates, and that he latest
>> is broken (on my laptop it doesn't shut down, gets an oops instead).
>> Not good for transporting.
>>
> For a good description of the updates , subscribe to
> fedora-announce-list. Usually the security updates are listed with the
> [SECURITY] tag in the subject , but sometimes a security update goes by
> without any special mention besides the entry in the changelog saying
> something like "Fixed CAN #.... ".

I'm on the list, what am I supposed to see? I didn't ask _why_ there
have been several kernel updates, I merely observed there have been several.



>
>>
>>>> I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd
>>>> be perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server
>>>> breaks then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
>>> "broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
>>> NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
>>> day after.
>>
>>
>>
>> This justifies my hands-on update policy.
>>
>> The option to log software updates would be good - email (preferably
>> to another box) and a printed report are good options.
>
>
> Then the approach you need is something different: configure your
> machines to download from a local mirror. And only put in that mirror
> the packages that you have already tested on your network.

I've not noticed that Yum can be configured to do that. I can make it
update but not download, but I don't think it can download and not update.

up2date can do that, and that's what I did with Taroon beta.



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Paul Howarth wrote:

>>I'm not a fan on Yum.
>
>
> You can find a list of mirrors organised geographically at:
> http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html
>
> An example of how to set up your own mirrorlist:
> http://fedoranews.org/tchung/yum-mirrorlist/
>
> The Fedora installer, in contrast to Debian's, asks as few questions as

Which Debian installer? I recall installing Ubuntu answering 2-3
questions with the (almost) current Debian installer.

> it can reasonably get away with. For some people this is an advantage,
> and for others it's a disadvantage.

yum could be installed unconfigured and ask when first used.
Kickstarters would, of course, edit the config files as they can edit so
many others.






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Am Mi, den 04.05.2005 schrieb Paul Howarth um 2:01:

> You can find a list of mirrors organised geographically at:
> http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html

> Cheers, Paul.

A very simple way to restrict the automatic mirror selection is to
slightly edit the yum repo file. An example:

In /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo change

mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core-$releasever

to become

mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core-$releasever.us.east

and you will only get US east coast mirror servers. This works too with
..uk or .de.

Alexander


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Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> Am Mi, den 04.05.2005 schrieb Paul Howarth um 2:01:
>
>
>>You can find a list of mirrors organised geographically at:
>>http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html
>
>
>>Cheers, Paul.
>
>
> A very simple way to restrict the automatic mirror selection is to
> slightly edit the yum repo file. An example:

You and Paul seem to be missing the point; while one _can_ do this, it's
not obvious that one can nor is it obvious what the allowable values are.

It _should_ be, it _could_ be easier. It is something that should be set
on every installation, values that suit Aussies won't suit Canucks.
There is not a good default.



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John Summerfied wrote:
> Alexander Dalloz wrote:
>
>> Am Mi, den 04.05.2005 schrieb Paul Howarth um 2:01:
>>
>>
>>
>>> You can find a list of mirrors organised geographically at:
>>> http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html
>>>
>>
>>
>>> Cheers, Paul.
>>>
>>
>>
>> A very simple way to restrict the automatic mirror selection is to
>> slightly edit the yum repo file. An example:
>
> You and Paul seem to be missing the point; while one _can_ do this, it'=
s
> not obvious that one can

It's not obvious that yum exists, either. I would guess that the
inexperienced user would be hitting the flashing red !.

> nor is it obvious what the allowable values are.

I think it is pretty obvious that a 404 error isn't a mirror list.

> It _should_ be, it _could_ be easier. It is something that should be se=
t
> on every installation, values that suit Aussies won't suit Canucks. The=
re
> is not a good default.

Sure there is a good default. One that works, which is what we have now.

Heck, most people that post here don't like the mirror list (out of sync
rhn-applet, different results on different runs while mirror are syncing,
etc.) and end up hard coding the mirror they want anyway. If you have th=
e
ability to choose a mirror to download the ISOs from, you have the abilit=
y
to set the appropriate mirror the yum and up2date configurations.

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On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 07:05, John Summerfied wrote:

> Update lists mirrors; it seems that Yum downloads a fresh list each time
> (yuck, I'd rather see the list in an rpm that's updated as needed), so
> that should be a quick fix. Once a mirror fixes its problems, relist it.

Does yum pick a mirror at random now? I run several machines
through the same caching http proxy and when I first started it
seemed like most files would be cached. Now, with no change at
my end it seems like there is never a cache hit even when
another machine just performed the same update. Is there a
way to force the order of mirror attempts to be the same so
the cache will work again?

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Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 07:05, John Summerfied wrote:
>
>
>> Update lists mirrors; it seems that Yum downloads a fresh list each
>> time (yuck, I'd rather see the list in an rpm that's updated as needed=
),
>> so that should be a quick fix. Once a mirror fixes its problems, relis=
t
>> it.
>
> Does yum pick a mirror at random now?

It is configured to do that be default now, yes.

> I run several machines
> through the same caching http proxy and when I first started it seemed =
like
> most files would be cached. Now, with no change at my end it seems lik=
e
> there is never a cache hit even when another machine just performed the
> same update. Is there a way to force the order of mirror attempts to be
> the same so the cache will work again?

Remove the mirror list and set yum to use the mirror you prefer. Or set
up a local yum repo and point them all to that.

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