Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

[Gerald Pfeifer]

When I did my patch to add md5sums to the announcements of GCC
snapshots what I had tested on my notebook actually failed to
work on gcc.gnu.org -- openssl does not yet support sha256 there.

That made me realize that we are still running RHEL 4 which was
first released early in 2005.  I understand there is still a bit
of life in that platform (and I do understand Enterprise Linux,
kind of key to my day job <g>), but still I wonder -- are there
any plans moving to RHEL 5, say?

Gerald

Re: Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

[Christopher Faylor]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 08:49:46PM +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>When I did my patch to add md5sums to the announcements of GCC
>snapshots what I had tested on my notebook actually failed to work on
>gcc.gnu.org -- openssl does not yet support sha256 there.
>
>That made me realize that we are still running RHEL 4 which was first
>released early in 2005.  I understand there is still a bit of life in
>that platform (and I do understand Enterprise Linux, kind of key to my
>day job <g>), but still I wonder -- are there any plans moving to RHEL
>5, say?

A while ago, I started up a virtual machine on one of our almost useless
"backup" sourceware systems to see what would be required to upgrade.  I
was actually thinking of switching to Fedora since it allows you to more
easily upgrade between releases.

fche and I got into a (very) mild disagreement on that course of action so
I haven't pursued it much since then.

I agree that we need to upgrade but it really would be nice to move to
a new system at that time too.

I wonder if we could get some kind organization to donate new hardware.
That would make the switchover much easier.

We do have access to a google-sponsored machine but its configuration is
not as hefty as the current sourceware so I don't think we'd want to
move there.

cgf

Re: Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 02:57:45PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> [...]
> I agree that we need to upgrade but it really would be nice to move to
> a new system at that time too.

Yeah, if only...

> I wonder if we could get some kind organization to donate new hardware.
> That would make the switchover much easier.

Yeah, or else a multi-day extended downtime, with a robust
backup/snapshot of the root partitions so we can undo any
experimentation safely.

We could live-upgrade server3 to use it as a guinea-pig, for it runs
no essential services right now.  I'd advise RHEL5 or even 6 (beta, or
we could wait a little more) as opposed to Fedora, since the latter
not only permits but forces regular OS upgrades.  I'd rather not touch
the guts of the machine again for a few years after the next change.

- FChE

Re: Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

[Christopher Faylor]

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 03:04:03PM -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
>Hi -
>
>On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 02:57:45PM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> I agree that we need to upgrade but it really would be nice to move to
>> a new system at that time too.
>
>Yeah, if only...

I don't know why this is inconceivable.  We've already done it two
(three?) times.

>> I wonder if we could get some kind organization to donate new hardware.
>> That would make the switchover much easier.
>
>Yeah, or else a multi-day extended downtime, with a robust
>backup/snapshot of the root partitions so we can undo any
>experimentation safely.
>
>We could live-upgrade server3 to use it as a guinea-pig, for it runs
>no essential services right now.  I'd advise RHEL5 or even 6 (beta, or
>we could wait a little more) as opposed to Fedora, since the latter
>not only permits but forces regular OS upgrades.  I'd rather not touch
>the guts of the machine again for a few years after the next change.

And the debate continues...

I think we've already seen the problems with sitting on a release for
several years.  I'd rather have the flexibility of being able to update
easily rather than painfully.  I have no problem with updating every
couple of years, notwithstanding personal bus impaction.

If we had two similar systems rather than the current foisted-upon-us
one system with two nearly useless lesser systems then we could do this
easily.

Actually, I guess we could do it with one system, a huge disk, lots of
memory, and the ability to run a virtual machine which mirrors its host.

cgf