Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 11:02:12 +1000 From: BSD Freak <bsd-freak@mbox.com.au> To: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: There must be a better way to maintain older systems Message-ID: <ddbe48dd7dec.dd7decddbe48@mbox.com.au>
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Hi all, I am responsible for maintaining 14 FreeBSD, 1 Windows 2000 and 1 Solaris servers at three sites. While I am certianly no fan of Windows 2000 or the commercial UNIX distributions I have to say they take up a lot less of my time to maintain. For example I can download (binary packages) patches and "Service Packs"/hotfixes to patch bugs and vulnerabilities and then I forget about it. Upgrades of OS happen once every 3-4 years (and usually accomany a hardware upgrade which makes it a bit neater and less risky). With FreeBSD however I find myself upgrading every six months or so when a new version is released. I spend half my time upgrading the 14 production servers (in the middle of the night usually!), then by the time I have gotten around to the last system, I'm usually only a month or so away from the next -RELEASE and I I have to do it all again if I am to keep my systems secure and current. I find myself thinking there *MUST* be a better way. I am quite happy with the stability/features of older versions (ie 4.4-R 4.5-R etc). Surely I don't have go through this upgrade cycle every six months! It would be great to just run a pkg_add which would overwrite any insecure binaries with newer patched ones (and do an actual binary upgrade only when absolutely required - e.g. every 2-3 years). I am even thinking of starting such a project myself. Am I missing something? (i.e. is there a better way?) (If someone tells me to cvsup and do a makeworld on my busy production servers I will scream!) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Never lose a fax again, receive faxes to your personal email account! Visit http://www.mbox.com.au/fax To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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