Fedora Core brevity vs server upgrades

[John Summerfied]

rado wrote:
> hi y'all
> 
> Oh I know some people might say you have no business running servers on
> Fedora because the Cores are so short lived and yes, it's not an ideal
> position but sometimes you have to just grin and bear it. ...hard to
> beat for the money huh?
> 
> Well, I would like some views on this, if you just want to say don't run
> fc then please just don't respond k? What we have here is a new core
> coming out bout every six months and then probably a year and it's in
> legacy. This seems to be the pattern. Now then you experienced hands
> w/this have seen what happens as soon as it is released from testing. I
> have not that much experience there. 
> 
> I saw remarks by Alexander Dalloz and others whom I respect all greatly.
> They seemed to instill in me that just because the core is released does
> not mean that there are above avg problems w/it right then. The main
> public (not just the testers) get a hold of it and bugzilla gets it's
> share of activity. Given all this, when you think is ideal time to
> upgrade??? Do it right away...wait a couple months...when??? 
> 
> I don't have a bench test machine anymore...and I have 3 fedora boxes 2
> servers synced together backing each others availability, and another
> box also running fc3 that mainly holds backups for the 3 fedora boxes
> and 2 windows and also will be the box I want to settle in as my pc,
> for doing dev. work and what not.

I'd not use FC on a server.

I maintain several machines, some running Debian, a couple run FC3.

I maintain the software remotely - where remotely varies from across the 
LAN to via dialup Internet.

apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a 
local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror, 
and the initial configuration is done at install time.

I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I 
_could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to 
control when updates go in.

By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such 
as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there 
are few locations further away than those.

I see an enormous volume of updates for FC. I've not checked on what 
they fix, but I suspect they're mostly not security-related.

I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd be 
perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server breaks 
then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.

If you want a Red Hat-based solution then look at the free download 
versions of RH's Enterprise Linux. I have not used one, but I might. I 
have been downloading the source updates, and they're relatively few as 
compared with FC.

I don't think Debian is a good solution atm: the stable version is about 
  as ancient as RHL 7.3, and the next stable version is very late. I'm 
running Sarge (the next Stable version), but there are hazards and 
worries about crucial software (eg firewall, vpn) updates breaking the 
systems and locking me out.

Between FC3 and EL there is the Debian-based Ubuntu. I'm running that 
too, and he volume of updates is low - security only, and only for a 
subset of what's available. The release cycle is six months - October 
and April, and the support is (I think) eighteen months or so.





-- 

Cheers
John

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