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Re: Non-debian tools for fetching DEB packages?



On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 01:43:23PM +0100, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:28:35 -0800, Joe wrote in message 
> <[🔎] 45ADA5F3.40807@emenaker.com>:
> 
> > Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > > You may also find that you have wget which you can use to get the
> > > DEBs (via either ftp or http).
> > >   
> > Even wget is missing. When they say it downloads just the essential 
> > files... I guess they really mean it.
> > > I'm curious, however.  What is the advantage to using debtakeover
> > > and debootstrap instead of a regular install to that partition?
> > >   
> > You mean... *besides* the fact that I have no physical access to the 
> > machine and have no way of accessing with the drives *other* than by
> > an  ssh session into the (currently Fedora) box? No reason, really. :)
> 
> ..and still no productive service downtime?  ;o)

well, no. of course not. you can't convert a machine from RH to debian
(or from any OS to any other OS) without some downtime.

what you're trading is a small amount of downtime NOW for less downtime
later - estimated downtime-savings coming from increased reliability
and/or simplicity of future upgrades. or you may decide that the fact
that debian systems are less work and hassle to maintain is worth a
small amount of downtime now.

either way if you think that having debian rather than RH is a Good
Thing, then there's a price to be paid (in labour and in downtime) to
have that.

the trick is to schedule the downtime so that it has minimal impact on
your users. if you have more than one machine, you can even have ZERO
*apparent* downtime (just a bit of sluggishness) as one machine can
handle the entire workload while the other is being worked on.



which gives you another almost-zero downtime method for doing the
conversion - ask your co-lo providers if they can provide you with a
second machine for a few days or weeks. that'll be easiest if you give
them some incentive like upgrading from a cheaper machine to a more
expensive machine - keep the old, cheap machine running until you have
the new machine converted and running everything you need, and all the
data and config files copied over and modified to fit the new system.


the point of this message is that, to a reasonable degree of accuracy,
downtime can be estimated and planned for. if you plan ahead then you
can minimise downtime to (almost) nothing.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)



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