Re: When Debian 4.1 will arrive... will anyone care?
On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 07:37:35AM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 03:17:34PM +1000, Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:
> > IMO, if you need a 'stable' system with some newer packages, you're
> > better off learning how apt's pinning stuff works than bothering with
> > backports. it's not hard.
>
> There is a very good reason to prefer backports over unstable/testing
> packages got with pinning: the glibc.
ooh. scary. when you put it like that, i can really understand why
anyone ought to be terrified of apt & pinning.
or maybe, just maybe, anyone running stable+some-from-unstable should
actually test any upgrades on another machine *BEFORE* they install them
on their production servers. new glibc or not.
oddly enough, that's precisely what they should do before
upgrading/installing any packages from backports too. and testing. and
before upgrading from an old debian stable release to a brand-new debian
stable release.
btw, debian handles upgrades of glibc really well. it hasn't been a
problem for years (not since the libc4 -> libc6 transition, which
required certain packages to be upgraded in a very precise order...all
automated by a long-obsolete script i wrote called autoup.sh). the
postinst for libc6 even looks for daemons which need to be restarted
(e.g. sshd, apache, proftpd, and others) after the upgrade and asks you
whether it should restart them.
there may be some compatibility problems with new major versions of
glibc, but a) that's why upgrades should be tested on another machine
first, and b) in practice that is extremely rare.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the
grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin
charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what
they say if they had.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0
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