Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:31:44 -0500 From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl_lists@tx.rr.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: challenge: end of life for 6.2 is premature with buggy 6.3 Message-ID: <8A3638B8BF777C9DF4AB354A@utd65257.utdallas.edu> In-Reply-To: <1212684781.10665.81.camel@localhost> References: <9B7FE91B-9C2E-4732-866C-930AC6022A40@netconsonance.com> <200806051023.56065.jhb@freebsd.org> <CE0D857CF3C54017B29052F0@utd65257.utdallas.edu> <1212684781.10665.81.camel@localhost>
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--On Thursday, June 05, 2008 17:53:01 +0100 Tom Evans <tevans.uk@googlemail.com> wrote: > > I think that, especially with open source products, there is a large > emphasis on testing in your own environments, and choosing the 'correct' > version of a particular software package is important. For example, at > $JOB, we had a lot of servers running 6.1 as it was an extended lifetime > release, so no point jumping to 6.2, instead we waited for 6.3 to pass > our integration testing. > Not everyone has those kinds of resources. The domain I'm referring to is a hobby site, run by a husband and wife. They started with shared hosting and moved to a dedicated box when I volunteered to help with the backend work. For several years we ran one server hosting dns, imaps, smtps, mail lists and websites. Yes, it's not ideal, but when you have zero income you do what you can. Testing like you describe is out of the question. We now have the embarrassment of riches of two servers; one for web and the old one for the rest. The old box is still running 5.4 SECURITY. The new box is running 6.1. I'd *like* to upgrade both boxes, and the older box can go offline comfortably for several hours without anyone but me noticing. But if the web box goes down for 30 seconds, queries from the users start pouring in. > We buy usually the same chassis for all our servers, and test > extensively before deploying to a new chassis/OS/anything. This is the > definition of change management, which is expensive, takes lots of time > and planning, and doesn't guarantee zaroo bugs - just a high likelihood > of not hitting them. It also isn't smooth, when we tested 6.1, we found > a multitude of bugs in bce(4), which we worked with net@ and David > Christensen of Broadcom to get fixed (they work lovely now :). > Wouldn't that be nice! Unfortunately, it's not reality for some of us. And I'm not going to run anything but FreeBSD, because it's the best open source solution there is, bar none. When I run into problems I usually don't say much on the lists. I use Google and read diffs and try to do my best to figure it out on my own. But testing? Not a chance? Contributing? I do what I can. I maintain a bunch of ports. I'm not a developer, and I can't "read" code and figure out what's going on except for the simplest of tasks. -- Paul Schmehl As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer.
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