Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 00:09:12 -0500 From: Scott Lambert <lambert@lambertfam.org> To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD: Server or Desktop OS? Message-ID: <20021117050912.GA1564@laptop.lambertfam.org> In-Reply-To: <20021117002942.R23359-100000@hub.org> References: <XFMail.20021117052604.home@jukkis.net> <20021117002942.R23359-100000@hub.org>
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On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 12:32:36AM -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote: > On Sun, 17 Nov 2002 home@jukkis.net wrote: > > > > > On 17-Nov-2002 Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > > But, back to my question "What happens when RELENG_4_7 crashes?" ... in > > > the past, before I did anything else, I'd upgrade to -STABLE, figuring it > > > might be something that someone else caught and was fixed ... but, looking > > > at the above changes in RELENG_4_7, it seems that reporting the crash is > > > more or less useless ... if its already fixed in -STABLE, is someone going > > > to MFC it down to RELENG_4_7? > > > > > > Up until this weekend, I had two heavily used/loaded servers pounding on > > > -STABLE ... if one crashed, I had netdump in place to dump core to the > > > other server, so that I had a crashdump ... and I'd report the results I > > > could figure out, in hopes that *someone* would look at it and get it > > > fixed, or ask me for more information on the bug ... basically, I'd risk a > > > crash in the hopes of solidifying the OS for the next release, but I kind > > > of hope(d) that -STABLE would at least run for more then a day or two :( > > > > > > > Isn't that the point? You run -STABLE to ensure that it is and will > > become -STABLE. If it's not, you will let everyone know that. How long > > have you been running stable, and how many times have you had to tell > > that it's crashing? > > Since '94 ... and, until recently, not often ... If you have been running -STABLE since '94, you have seen several periods during which -STABLE wasn't good enough for a production machine. I've only been doing this since '98 and have seen several one week or longer periods of instablility myself. Back before the advent of the "security" branches, I would upgrade my servers about every thirty days to a, at that time 4 or 5 day old, -STABLE. (It sometimes takes 2 or 3 days for someone to mention on the mailing lists that they have problems with -STABLE on a particular day.) If a machine has problems, I back the production systems up to a -STABLE that does work. Then I work to get the test machines to not have the problem and only then do I again advance along the -STABLE branch. My workstation and the other admin workstations ran the bleeding edge -STABLE upgraded about once per week so we had a feel for when -STABLE was "stable" enough to be rolled out to the servers. Now that the "security" branches exist, I use them on the servers and run -STABLE on my laptop so that I don't get suprised going from one .X release to the next. So my servers do without the performance improvements between releases now. If I run into a bug that is fixed in -STABLE, I will upgrade the servers to the -STABLE that fixes that bug. Otherwise I'm sticking with the "security" branches on the servers. I never had machines with the loads Marc is talking about. But if they went down, causing an unscheduled outage, I tried hard to make sure it didn't happen again any time soon. All of my unscheduled outages were hardware related. Marc, my humble advice is to use the date tag for cvsup on your boxes that are crashing to get the -STABLE just after Matt's fixes went into the tree. You will have to add the security patches to the tree yourself but it's better than having the machines crash as often as yours apparently do. -- Scott Lambert KC5MLE Unix SysAdmin lambert@lambertfam.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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