From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 25 00:36:59 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B6E8E29 for ; Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:36:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tundra@tundraware.com) Received: from ozzie.tundraware.com (ozzie.tundraware.com [75.145.138.73]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C01938FC1B for ; Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:36:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.0.2] (viper.tundraware.com [192.168.0.2]) (authenticated bits=0) by ozzie.tundraware.com (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id qAP0anlH042353 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:36:49 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from tundra@tundraware.com) Message-ID: <50B1681E.8070700@tundraware.com> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:36:46 -0600 From: Tim Daneliuk User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD 9 Production Ready? References: <50B0F80B.6090400@tundraware.com> <20121125065854.1198fee8@X220.ovitrap.com> In-Reply-To: <20121125065854.1198fee8@X220.ovitrap.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (ozzie.tundraware.com [192.168.0.1]); Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:36:49 -0600 (CST) X-TundraWare-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-TundraWare-MailScanner-ID: qAP0anlH042353 X-TundraWare-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-TundraWare-MailScanner-From: tundra@tundraware.com X-Spam-Status: No X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:36:59 -0000 On 11/24/2012 05:58 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote: > Hi, > > On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:38:35 -0600 > Tim Daneliuk wrote: > >> I am currently running FBSD 8.3-STABLE on a production server that >> provides http, dns, smtp, and so on for a small domain. This is not >> a high arrival rate environment but it does need to be rock solid >> (which FBSD 4-8 have been). > > why would you like to break a running system? That's exactly what I don't want to do. >> >> I am contemplating moving to the FBSD 9 family. Is this branch ready > > I would stay with 8.x until the end of its support and move only then > to a new branch. It could be then 9.x or 10.y. I would then - but only > then - prefer the 10.y branch. > > I retired my 7.4 only because of lightning strike this spring. > > Robustness is my main goal here. Any change which brings only the risk > is avoided. I used to take this approach. However, I discovered the pain of fixing a configuration that jumped several major releases was way higher than tracking them each as they became stable. I did the 9.1-PRE upgrade today and - once the new system was compiled and ready to be installed - had only very minor conversion issues. In my case, the most painful part of conversion is the mail infrastructure. The server in question is the domain's mail server and it has a LOT of moving parts with custom configurations: sendmail, greylisting, mailscanner, spam assassin, mailman, SASL ... That is pretty much always what breaks. Doing smaller "leaps" tends to make this more tractable to control. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/