Re: Any plans to upgrade from RHEL 4?

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@sourceware.org>]

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