Re: Question: Why do you dist-upgrade?
Hi.
On Wed, 29 Apr 2015 13:52:07 -0500
Tim Kelley <tim.kelley.nola@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tim Kelley
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:13 PM, Reco <recoverym4n@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi.
> >
> > On Wed, 29 Apr 2015 11:11:52 -0500
> > Tim K <kelletim@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > For me, and I think anyone with a sensibly laid out system, it's so much
> > > less trouble and time to reinstall.
> >
> > While the amount of trouble is subjective, the install/upgrade time is
> > objective. And it's the last one that you estimated wrong.
> >
> > An debian-installer, being a complex frontend to debootstrap, install
> > packages and configures them. It also does disks partitioning, and the
> > whole process requires two reboots (to installer and to a new system).
> >
> > An upgrade process installs the packages, configures them, but does not
> > do partitioning. Also requires a single reboot that can be postponed
> > indefinitely.
> >
> > An upgrade is simply faster.
> >
>
> Hm. Not for me, anyway. None of those reboots matter to me much.
Get yourself a server hardware. Every reboot equals to 20-30 minutes on
hardware self-tests alone. Every reinstall requires that *magic*
firmware of very specific version (non-free, of course, so it's not
included in Debian CD).
Don't like server hardware? Get yourself a VPS, where every reinstall
requires you to communicate with those "friendly" overseas support guys.
And you'll be lucky if they don't charge you extra for console access.
Don't need a VPS? Get yourself an ARM board where every $DEITY-damn
*model* requires its' own street magic special trickery to run the
installer.
*Grumble* x86 desktop users. So many things are taken for granted.
No offense meant.
> > I can only really think of one reason
> > > to dist-upgrade, and that's if the system is remote (and a very good
> > reason
> > > it is). I'm wondering why some of you dist-upgrade ... do you just like
> > it
> > > that way? A habit?
> >
> > Upgrade can be done via SSH. Upgrade retains all my packages installed.
> > The most important thing is - upgrade does its best in handling all
> > those customizations in /etc.
> >
> > Oh absolutely. But it can make /etc cruftier over time.
# du -sxh /etc
40M
# du -sxh /etc/.git
32M
# tune2fs -l /dev/root | grep creat
Filesystem created: Fri Jan 27 23:41:53 2008
I can live with that cruft :)
> Being able to
> upgrade a distribution remotely is a very nice feature of Debian indeed.
Debian is not the only one in this regard.
Unless I'm mistaken, the only major distribution which does not
support major version upgrade is RHEL.
> > /var contents will do you little good without /etc in most server
> > environments
>
> /var's only separate because of the SSD (trying to activity on it, but I'm
> not sure that's really even an issue any more)
> In my case, I use the same SCMS at home as I do at work (salt) and that's
> where I configure most everything, and that is backed by remote git, and
> backed up remotely in addition to that, so, I think I'm covered there.
If you have a backup - it's not an issue. Provided, of course, that
such backup is tested on a regular basis.
> You're right though, the new install would be very painful without that,
> since you'd have to change a hundred little things, from /etc/papersize to
> all the shell settings (which I have a lot of). And I admit it's very
> uncommon for a home user to back their configuration up with an SCMS.
:)
> > > The cons are that firstly, it's very time consuming and much more
> > > complicated.
> >
> > See above.
> >
> >
> You have to admit, there is much more to go wrong on an upgrade than a
> reinstall.
Yes, indeed. For example, a power outage in a middle of upgrade may
result in unbootable system.
Re-install will end the same, of course, but another re-install will
fix it.
> Unless you were super-careful with your backports and software
> from outside the release in general that will cause problems, and while you
> might say "you should always be careful about that" it's also true that
> most people just aren't.
That's exactly why they suggest disabling third-party apt sources
before the upgrade :)
And users who install proprietary software should suffer anyway.
Especially the ones who use so-called "installers".
> But yes if you do it right, use /usr/local or /opt
> and /etc/local and /etc/opt, /var/opt and /var/local you should be fine,
> but I've never personally met anyone who does that. Or if you kept your
> stable plain vanilla - never met anyone who does that either.
I did. Basically, it's like this:
'apt-get install' = 'sudo make install'
'apt-get remove' = 'rm -rf'
'apt-get upgrade' = 'um. I'll think of something'
IMO if one is using Debian and tries to 'make install' their way - one
might as well use Slackware :)
> > And that's a perfect example of good software as all those years your
> > system booted successfully.
> >
> >
> Well, yes, it is. I'm not dissing upgrading. I'd just rather re-install.
There are times then re-install is necessary. For example - unauthorized
access that turned the host into bitcoin farm, spam sender *and* CP
dump at the same time.
There are times then re-install is simpler indeed. For example -
changing the architecture (i386 → amd64) of the host.
But a run-of-the-mill dist-upgrade that sid users do every day? That
hardly justifies it.
Dist-upgrade from one major version to another is one of the strengths
of Debian. Disregarding it seem … strange to me.
Reco
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