John Stanley wrote: >> >> Now this is my last question: >> >> Can I be reasonably (say 90%) sure that the above command >> >> will not stop the server running? >> >> The command in question was: rpm -Uvh --force *.rpm >> where the RPMs were glibc and glibc-common. >> >> > No you can NOT and don't ever assume that. >> > That's a mistake thinking that. I wasn't assuming anything. I was asking for an estimate of the probability that the command will fail. In every such situation there is a certain probability p of success, and a probability 1-p of failure. Johnny Hughes suggested the command, so on that basis alone I would give it a high probability of success. >> > Wait and schedule a downtime window for it. >> >> I don't know what a "downtime window" is in this context. >> I'm either in the same place as the server, or I am not. > > Downtime Window: It's when you schedule a specific time to update the > machine or make repairs to that it needs. As I said, that doesn't make sense in my context. > If it's not a needed production machine then do it but you say it's > annoying if it happens and you seem worried (previous mails) so that is > why I gave the stern reply to not assume anything. One thing i'm not > going to tell someone in your situation is go ahead and do it. You > asked a valid question and I gave a valid response to you. Actually, my question was: what is the probability of failure? If someone tells me a horse has a 90% chance of winning, and I back it and it falls down, I don't blame my tipster. > I really don't think any one on this list would say go and do it. > You have good info to go on and what can happen. Well, all you have said is that from your experience (which you have not specified) you would not recommend my doing this. That's not quite fair. You also said that if glibc "breaks" PAM will fail and so ssh will fail. That is certainly a possibility I had not considered. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin