Do we need this crap on LWN?

Posted Feb 22, 2007 13:18 UTC (Thu) by ofeeley (guest, #36105)
In reply to: Do we need this crap on LWN? by markc
Parent article: ESR's goodbye note

"I recently got a VPS with Debian
3.1 installed, within 2 weeks I upgraded it to Ubuntu Dapper then on to
Debian Etch (v4) then back across to Ubuntu Feisty (because Debian doesn't
have a nanoweb package) with zero manual intervention."

If (as is probable from you calling it a VPS) it's a SWsoft/OpenVZ/Virtuozzo based VPS then the problem that you describe will definitely occur _if_ the hosting provider hasn't made the right templates available.

The only way that major upgrades across kernel versions can work with that sort of virtual server is if the kernel (and related infrastructure like the /dev/* stuff, glibc etc) that are pulled down when you do an update are matched by changes in the hypervisor.

The lack of upgradability of one CentOS version to another is more an issue of what your VPS hosting provider has made available than any limitation of rpm.

I don't know if the same limitations apply to other virtualisation techniques (Xen, kvm etc). I have experience of exactly the problem you're describing and it irritated me, but I blame the hosting company ;)

I can only assume that either you had pinned the kernel in your migration to/from various Ubuntu versions, or the hosting provider had templates available for all those versions.

Thanks for the rest of your clear and detailed answer.