Comments on: More on CentOS 5.3 to 5.4 http://holyhandgrenade.org/blog/2009/11/more-on-centos-5-3-to-5-4/ System administration from the trenches. Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:10:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Jeff http://holyhandgrenade.org/blog/2009/11/more-on-centos-5-3-to-5-4/comment-page-1/#comment-50 Jeff Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:41:15 +0000 http://holyhandgrenade.org/blog/?p=366#comment-50 I've found this to be the case with certain upgrades, but RHEL/CentOS's minor releases have been pretty good to me in this regard -- this is actually the first time in all the time I've been administering CentOS systems that I've been burned by something like this. Major releases are another story; I've found those to be especially problematic even going from one Fedora release to the next (Fedora 8->9 on my build system was a particular nightmare that broke pretty much everything about the system). But again, it's mostly my own fault for missing the CentOS-specific release notes -- I didn't experience anything that couldn't have been avoided by finding the correct documentation. I still plan to update in this way for minor releases and update packs, as my only damage has been minor, hasn't affected any user-facing aspects of a system and is much quicker than doing clean reinstalls for the majority of systems. However, I'm absolutely not denigrating your approach: I still absolutely am keeping all of my configuration and data backups on hand when facing OS upgrades like this. I keep most systems managed by Puppet, all system configurations in revision control, and everything's ready to go when a colorful object of choice hits the fan. As we move more towards a virtualized infrastructure, where we can easily stand up clones of virtual machines to test upgrades, I suspect a lot of these problems will go away. As it stands today, though, I'm glad we have at least a basic release management framework in place and were able to catch these problems before they made their way onto any important systems. In any case, this is certainly a big motivation for me to move forward with finishing my Spacewalk deployment. Yum has definitely presented us with certain major issues in the release management process. I’ve found this to be the case with certain upgrades, but RHEL/CentOS’s minor releases have been pretty good to me in this regard — this is actually the first time in all the time I’ve been administering CentOS systems that I’ve been burned by something like this. Major releases are another story; I’ve found those to be especially problematic even going from one Fedora release to the next (Fedora 8->9 on my build system was a particular nightmare that broke pretty much everything about the system). But again, it’s mostly my own fault for missing the CentOS-specific release notes — I didn’t experience anything that couldn’t have been avoided by finding the correct documentation.

I still plan to update in this way for minor releases and update packs, as my only damage has been minor, hasn’t affected any user-facing aspects of a system and is much quicker than doing clean reinstalls for the majority of systems. However, I’m absolutely not denigrating your approach: I still absolutely am keeping all of my configuration and data backups on hand when facing OS upgrades like this. I keep most systems managed by Puppet, all system configurations in revision control, and everything’s ready to go when a colorful object of choice hits the fan.

As we move more towards a virtualized infrastructure, where we can easily stand up clones of virtual machines to test upgrades, I suspect a lot of these problems will go away. As it stands today, though, I’m glad we have at least a basic release management framework in place and were able to catch these problems before they made their way onto any important systems.

In any case, this is certainly a big motivation for me to move forward with finishing my Spacewalk deployment. Yum has definitely presented us with certain major issues in the release management process.

]]> By: Ryan Sears http://holyhandgrenade.org/blog/2009/11/more-on-centos-5-3-to-5-4/comment-page-1/#comment-49 Ryan Sears Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:35:47 +0000 http://holyhandgrenade.org/blog/?p=366#comment-49 Yeah, this is pretty much why I don't do upgrades en masse, its a LOT easier to just start fresh and move your settings from a backup. I can't really think of any time when I did a major upgrade and it ended well. Yeah, this is pretty much why I don’t do upgrades en masse, its a LOT easier to just start fresh and move your settings from a backup. I can’t really think of any time when I did a major upgrade and it ended well.

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