[ale] Red Hat upgrades?

Thu Jul 7 09:55:40 EDT 2011

You and I define "stability" differently.   Stability to me means you
can continue to run and get security/bug fixes until you're ready to
move to a new platform.   Often planning and implementing such a move
for complex systems takes more than the 13 months you mention.

I am NOT against Fedora.  Fedora is used as a test bed for what ends up
in future RHEL releases and is supported as a project by RedHat and I
use Fedora.

A quote on the main page of Fedora Project:

"Since its first version, in 2003, Red Hat's Fedora Linux has been the
best place to track what's on the leading edge of Linux and open source
software."

- Jason Brooks, eweek.com

If you'd like to quibble over my use of "bleeding" and his use of
"leading" rather than understanding the congruence between the words as
used in IT feel free.

>From Fedoraproject's objectives site:

"Produce robust time-based releases every six months using a release
model that allows the development team the flexibility it needs to
ensure quality, while making sure that a release does not slip
indefinitely. Our schedule may shift from time to time based on
participant needs, but only after consideration and approval by the
community governance entities that oversee the Project."

While you are technically correct in saying it is generally not EOL
until after 13 months the fact is that this is considered a SHORT time
for most Production systems as I noted above.

I made it clear that RHEL is for commercial use so am not sure why you
seem to be implying I said anything other than that.   My post was
mainly to explain why one can't "just upgrade" from one major RHEL
release to another and was not intended to dis Fedora or any other
distro in any way.

P.S. Haven't seen you at AUUG in a while.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Michael H. Warfield
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 4:20 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Cc: mhw at wittsend.com
Subject: Re: [ale] Red Hat upgrades?

On Tue, 2011-07-05 at 15:07 -0400, Lightner, Jeff wrote: 

> The philosophy between Fedora and RHEL is different.

> 

> In Fedora they are doing bleeding edge so you MUST upgrade every 6

> months or so or risk running an EOL version that isn't getting any

> security or bug fixes. Requiring an upgrade is not a sign of

> "stability" even if the upgrade is painless.

I would respectfully disagree with you there.

1) Fedora is stable.  It's not bleeding edge unless you are on Rawhide.

That myth is promulgated by people arguing against Fedora.  Fedora is

very much like Ubuntu 6 month.

2) You can run at least 13 months.  The Fedora edition is not EOL'ed

until the initial test versions of the +2 edition are posted.  F15 is

out.  F14 is certainly supported and nobody has to upgrade.  F12 was

past it's shelf life and no longer receiving updates, this is true.  But

the repositories are all still out there and I had no problem doing a

smooth, seamless upgrade to F14, passing momentarily through F13. 

> In RHEL stability and supportability are the main drivers.

Another myth.  I've already dealt with that.  The main drivers are

commercial product deliverables.  Put the stability myth in the dustbin

where it belongs.  You want stability, you got it with Fedora if you go

-1 on the release version.  RHEL 6 is going to have it's amusements and

just WHY do you suppose CentOS has not released version 6 yet?  Yes, RH

made life miserable on Oracle and a couple of others but those others

included CentOS.  Stability is NOT their main objective. 

> People that are putting their large production installs (especially of

> 3rd party applications/databases) do not want to have to upgrade every

> few months because that usually requires doing some major testing and

> or porting to insure what ran on the old stuff runs on the new stuff.

> Therefore in RHEL rather than having each subversion go to higher base

> releases they stick with lower base releases and backport bug and

> security fixes (and the occasional enhancement) into that base

> release.   This is why RHEL5 runs BIND 9.3 even though 9.3 is EOL.

> The 9.3 run on RHEL5 is actually RedHat's version with several

> modifications that they put from upstream higher base releases.   This

> way even if ISC, the maker of BIND, doesn't support 9.3, RedHat does

> so long as it is their 9.3 package.   So you can upgrade from

> RHEL5(.0) to 5.6 (or any other 5.x version) without any issues and

> what you are getting are these modified base!

> releases with additional RHEL versioning on them. More than once I've

> had to show that some security CVE that is addressed in a later

> upstream version of a package is actually also addressed in the RHEL

> version we're currently running. This is because most security

> scanning software looks only at base versions and not the extended

> versioning provide on RHEL.

> 

> You CAN actually put newer kernels and newer base versions of packages

> on RHEL - it simply won't be supported by RedHat any longer. Most

> folks using RHEL are using it specifically because they want a vendor

> supported version of Linux and one that is shown as supported by

> whatever 3rd party app or hardware they are using with it. Sure the

> app or hardware MIGHT work with other Linux flavors with enough

> tweaking but the manufacturer/distributor doesn't support it in that

> other flavor.

> 

> If you're rolling your own for everything you can use LFS, Ubuntu,

> Slackware or whatever but if you're looking for a "stable" system that

> has "support" you have to use RHEL or Suse and more 3rd party

> (commercial) apps are supported out of the box on RHEL than on Suse.

> 

> -----Original Message-----

> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
James Sumners

> Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 1:52 PM

> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts

> Subject: Re: [ale] Red Hat upgrades?

> 

> Yes. But every other distro also supports upgrading between major

> releases. Red Hat seems to think this is some impossible task, and

> would rather subject their users to days of wasted time.

> 

> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Wolf Halton <wolf at wolfhalton.info>
wrote:

> > Red Hat wants their users to update sequentially.  Doesn't every
other

> > distro do something similar?

> 

> 

> 

> -- 

> James Sumners

> http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

> 

> "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts

> pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it

> is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become

> drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

> 

> Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)

> CH:D 59

Regards,

Mike

-- 

Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com

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