From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jul 22 9:19:28 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64CFF37B489 for ; Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:19:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zoon.lafn.org (zoon.lafn.org [206.117.18.9]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4D4E43E5E for ; Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:19:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bc979@lafn.org) Received: from [10.0.1.90] (66-81-79-43-modem.o1.com [66.81.79.43]) by zoon.lafn.org (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id g6MGJ4c05767; Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:19:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bc979@lafn.org) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: bc979@mail.lafn.org Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20020722094844.D9023@cygnus.wks.Gallup.cia-g.com> References: <20020722094844.D9023@cygnus.wks.Gallup.cia-g.com> Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 09:17:51 -0700 To: David Wilk From: Doug Hardie Subject: Re: FreeBSD upgrade maintenance vs. debian (please help) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 0948 -0600 7/22/2002, David Wilk wrote: >How do you guys deal with this? warm-failover systems to take over during >downtimes? Or do you just accept that the system will go down for a while >at least once/year? > I run an ISP that uses FreeBSD for all our servers. I keep one additional "test/development" server that is not used for production. It has all the source/ports etc. New versions are loaded on it first. All the makeworld is done on it. The various applications are tested. Once I am convinced everything is working, then I bring down a production server, NFS mount /usr/src, /usr/obj, and /usr/ports from the test machine and do a make installworld and make installkernel. Depending on the update, mergemaster may need to be run and some followup cleanup by hand. Reboot the system and you are running on the new OS. There is a real risk in trying to keep one version for a year. I am using 4.3 which is no longer supported by the various security fixes. I try to keep to one update a year so it will be awhile before I get close again. Had to switch some hardware this year which ate up my update windows. -- -- Doug To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message