Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...
On Thu, 6 Apr 2017 10:45:23 -0500
David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu 06 Apr 2017 at 11:50:56 (+0100), Joe wrote:
> >
> > Granted, there have been more little niggles with each upgrade (this
> > machine started life as sarge), things get more complicated with
> > each version.
>
> I thought lenny→squeeze was the most complicated, because lenny's
> standard kernel was not compatible with the upgrade process and
> had to be upgraded in a preliminary step. That could then lead to
> knock-on effects with non-free firmware. And, for safety, udev
> had to be immediately upgraded because of the new kernel, then
> the system rebooted to bring them into operation before the
> upgrade.
I don't remember that, though I must have gone through it. I wouldn't
dare try skipping a version. The only serious problem I had was when
exim4 jumped a version, and the new one didn't accept debconf
directives, and I hadn't noticed. Upgrading with the old configuration
file being kept turned out to be a big no-no, it got into a state where
even dpkg wouldn't uninstall the broken bits, and I had to resort to
deleting files manually.
>
> > I'm not that bothered about downtime (within reason, the
> > Debian lists get very stroppy when their emails bounce) but some
> > people are.
>
> A few minutes later you posted:
>
> > If I was a paid admin looking after multiple servers, yes, that's
> > the obvious thing to do. But this isn't my job, and I can't afford
> > to buy a second set of hardware, so the only practical test is to
> > actually do it.
>
> How about getting those freeloading critics to fork out for
> a new drive so that you can build and test a second system
> (dual-bootable) during your scheduled downtimes.
>
My what? It's a home server/firewall/mail server. There is no scheduled
downtime. I migrated to a new hard drive a few months ago, and that
gave me some unscheduled downtime until I discovered what the BIOS was
doing with drive naming... it was one of those 'no, this *cannot* be
happening' moments where I copied /etc/fstab between the wrong pair of
drives, thereby breaking both old and new installations.
It still seems to be unreasonably difficult to use a working
installation to install the correct grub information to another drive
which is intended to become the new working installation, still a matter
of messing around with chroot and a sequence of mounts and unmounts.
--
Joe
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