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Long-term support and backport riskLong-term support and backport riskPosted Jun 21, 2007 1:59 UTC (Thu) by cine (guest, #5597)Parent article: Long-term support and backport risk
Why are they not doing the obvious?
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Long-term support and backport risk Posted Jun 21, 2007 2:19 UTC (Thu) by loening (guest, #174) [Link] Exactly what I wss thinking.
The majority of people using server hardware never update the hardware during the life of the equipment. That goes for most workstation hardware as well. This means the vast majority of people utilizing RHEL4 when it first came out do not need any of the backported features, they just need bug and security fixes.
The people who will need new features are the people with new equipment who are installing RHEL4 for the first time. By definition this equipment is not production yet, and as such it's not nearly as big a problem if a bug is encountered as if a bug was hit in the supposedly old stable kernel. For them they could use a more recent kernel that RHEL4 has only included recently.
Granted, this may mean supporting more kernel versions, but I gotta imagine it'd be a lot easier putting in bug fixes on 2-3 kernels at various levels of maturity than in trying to backport features to a single kernel while still trying to maintain a high level of stability.
Long-term support and backport risk Posted Jun 21, 2007 18:32 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] This sounds like the only sane solution to me. Yes, it means a proliferation of kernels, but most of them will just be tiny updates. Not a big deal for the maintainers, and with the auto-update tools we have now, not be a big deal for the customers either.
The scenario: I can update all I want, I will only ever get a minimally invasive, bugfixed version of the kernel I'm already running. To get new features, I would have to explicitly ask for the new version. Of course, the newest kernel would always be used for new installations.
It's been a while since I've had to really care about uptime, thank goodness. But, frankly, if the enterprise kernel situation is as bad as this article hints, I would not touch RHEL with a 10 foot pole. Talk about scary!
Long-term support and backport risk Posted Jun 21, 2007 18:35 UTC (Thu) by Fats (subscriber, #14882) [Link] It is good to be able to standardize on a certain distro like RHEL4 company wide. For older and the most recent bought hardware.
Long-term support and backport risk Posted Jun 24, 2007 15:47 UTC (Sun) by riel (subscriber, #3142) [Link] The majority of people using server hardware never update the hardware during the life of the equipment.They do roll out new servers though, and want to support that new hardware. They also run 3rd party applications and want to run the same operating system across all their servers. Yes, some enterprise customers want to eat their cake and have it. No, we cannot leave the solving of that riddle to them. They are the customer and we should get them a usable compromise.
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