[CentOS] EL 6 rollout strategies? (Scientific Linux)

[Lamar Owen]

[drifting farther off-topic....]

On Wednesday, May 11, 2011 04:34:49 PM Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 5/11/2011 3:18 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> >  And you must not use PostgreSQL, which won't painlessly upgrade on anything.....
> 
> Automatically doing the dump/load (and magically finding the space for 
> it) for version changes that need it would be a lot to ask.

Yes, I know.  Tried.

> >  I've had a few issues with [Ubuntu] servers, too.
> 
> With the LTS versions?  

Yes.

One upgrade I did from C4 to C5 (with upgradeany) was smoother than the last LTS upgrade I tried.  I liken the C5 -> C6 upgrade path as trying to take a Ubuntu LTS 6.06 to a 10.04; which path I tried, and failed, to get working.  In one case it was with a Dell laptop that came with Ubuntu from Dell, and that is supported by Dell with Ubuntu.  Sound quit (known issue), wireless went funky.  One 'accidental' (client-initiated) upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04 lost keyboard and mouse after gdm got control.

And even with Dell's that have RHEL support, I've seen issues with CentOS upgrades; but, then again, neither CentOS nor RHEL ( nor SL) support upgrading.

Upgrades are difficult problems to solve, and at the moment I don't know of any distribution (that claims upgradability) that gets it completely right for all the cases I've tried.

The CentOS path (it's not supported, but if you're brave and know exactly what you're doing there is upgradeany to let you shoot yourself in the foot) I feel is the correct one.