Finally!
Finally!
Posted Feb 22, 2007 3:52 UTC (Thu) by marduk (subscriber, #3831)In reply to: Finally! by tetromino
Parent article: ESR's goodbye note
Fedora users have to back up their system before upgrading?I don't think it's a requirement so much as it is common sense. Not that I use Fedora or Debian (or whatever) but it's just common sense to make sure you have a backup before you do something "potentially unsafe."
Posted Feb 22, 2007 4:36 UTC (Thu)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link]
Exactly. According to ESR himself, he wanted to upgrade a single package on the system. For this, one doesn't normally need backup (although it's always good to have it anyway). This upgrade attempt led to problems (the package management system told him there was going to be trouble). At this point, he should have asked questions on the list if he wasn't familiar with how to get himself out of trouble. Or even filed a bug. Or both. Or, if he was bent on doing it the "hacker way", he should have done the backup of his files at that point.
But, no. Instead, he pushed on by doing silly things (forceful removal of crucial libraries) and without backup. When the system finally got completely screwed (by his own doing), instead of using a recovery disk (in order words: it was still not too late!) and putting back the stuff he removed, he decided to flame the list. Where he blamed Fedora for the backup kludge that he needed to employ to save his files and described it as "horrible". At no point did it occur to him that he caused all this.
And to top it all off, this is not the first time he's done something like that. For instance, in December last year, there was a thread about "fedora-submit", which was initially written in a similarly arrogant manner. Along the lines of "my way or the highway". Of course, he never read any documentation or got himself familir with how things work in Fedora _now_. Many on the list pointed him in the right direction and after a few posts he accepted the advice and went to do his homework.
If he only asked about his problem before writing this rant, his problem would have been fixed with a lot less pain. And, maybe a few bugs would have been fixed too.
Posted Feb 22, 2007 6:27 UTC (Thu)
by k8to (guest, #15413)
[Link] (2 responses)
Sure on a production server, some minor differences in behavior might be catastrophic, but on a personal system, upgrading should leave me with a running system 100% of the time. I don't think this is unachievable, and I think it has generallly been achieved on most Linux distributions.
Posted Feb 22, 2007 7:31 UTC (Thu)
by bojan (subscriber, #14302)
[Link] (1 responses)
If he didn't force it, nothing bad would happen. The system would be 100% usable. In other words, the software refused to performed an unsafe operation. As designed.
The real issue is that he found a packaging bug. He should have reported it. And he would get a proper workaround until it was fixed. So, the big issue he made out if this is nothing but a regular occurrence in any software - bugs.
Posted Feb 22, 2007 14:15 UTC (Thu)
by k8to (guest, #15413)
[Link]
Specific case: ESR removed a library and was sad.
General case: upgrading without removing random libraries like a bonehead should not be unsafe or even really potentially unsafe. It should work.
> before you do something "potentially unsafe."Finally!
While he certainly did some unsafe things, I do not believe upgrading should be considered potentionally unsafe. At least at the level of a personal system.Finally!
Well, these "some unsafe things" turned out to be rather important libraries. So, the system was hosed. If he used the rescue CD, he could have gotten all those back in a few minutes.Finally!
Yes I acknowledged that.Finally!