[CentOS] what people really mean when they say they're running "5.3"?

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Sun Aug 8 17:29:48 UTC 2010


At Sun, 8 Aug 2010 12:11:35 -0400 (EDT) CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> 
>   more a terminology usage question than anything else, but in a
> couple of weeks, i'll be teaching the first of a few sessions on RHEL
> admin and, unsurprisingly, i'll be using centos (as i've done in the
> past).
> 
>   when i asked the organizer to identify the specific version of RHEL
> that was being used at the client site, i was told 5.3 so i can easily
> install 5.3 on the classroom machines, but i'm curious about something
> and i'll have my contact look into it:  if people *initially* install
> 5.3, is it standard behaviour to still regularly upgrade as new
> releases come out?

Depends.  Most people do update as new updates come out. Doing 'yum
update' regularly will update to newer point releases automagically. 
Some people (for various reasons) don't regularly update their systems.

Look in /etc/issue

> 
>   obviously, i have to ask my contact to verify what the client has
> been doing all this time but, in general, what's the normal behaviour
> for people running centos/rhel?  and is there a way to examine an
> install to see how updated it's been since that original installation?
> 
>   i just don't want to teach off of 5.3, only to find out later that
> they've been keeping up to date and 5.5 would have been a more
> appropriate choice.  thanks for any tips.

On a certain level there really isn't much difference from a general
admin POV -- it does not really make sense to go into a certain level of
detail (like specific version numbers). Basic functionallity is not
going to change from point version to point version.

> 
> rday
> 

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