[CentOS] Centos 6.3 - which repos to use?

[Nikolaos Milas]

On 27/1/2013 5:11 μμ, Johnny Hughes wrote:

> So upgrading one package can cause a domino effect that means you have
> either broken a bunch of packages or you have to rebuild a bunch of
> packages.

That is why you should *only* upgrade what is VITAL for your 
application(s), and in a carefully planned manner, as Johnny explains.

Building on the example I gave earlier, OpenLDAP Server, which IS 
important to be current in production due to critical bug (not only 
security) fixes, can be safely upgraded using LTB project RPMs 
(http://ltb-project.org/wiki/) which allows a current version WITHOUT 
affecting the rest of the system (by using alternate paths to install 
libs, executables etc.).

Any other Servers in need for a current version can be safely upgraded 
through a careful approach to make sure they don't break other things.

So, get to know your OS, your apps, your (S)RPMs; then plan, test on a 
non-production system, then plan deployment in production. For example, 
we *only* upgrade other critical apps like Postfix, Dovecot etc. when 
running as enterprise servers. There is no other option here; for 
example, Postfix as available in RHEL/CentOS 5, is no more supported by 
the Postfix developer. We have to build our own RPMs based on our 
particular requirements.

We enjoy the stability of CentOS because it allows us to only upgrade 
what is vital. We don't care about Gnome and other modernization(s). Our 
CentOS 5 enterprise servers do not even have Gnome installed.

Nick