[mythtv-users] Backend OS - opinions on Archlinux

[Kenni Lund]

Den 07/01/2013 22.36 skrev "Jameson" <imntreal at gmail.com>:
>
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 6:38 AM, Kenni Lund <kenni at kelu.dk> wrote:
> > The issue with rolling release distributions on servers are that every
> > application on the server suddenly can receive a major update which
> > requires your attention. So when you perform a regular system update,
> > which you expect to spend 5 minutes on, you'll end up spending 3
> > hours, since you need to update some configuration file to be
> > compatible with the new major release of some application which was
> > updated. You can choose to avoid updating some of your applications,
> > but it will only be a matter of time until other packages on the
> > system becomes incompatible with your hold-back packages, and hence
> > forcing you to update the packages anyway.
>
> If updating config files for package updates is chewing up that much
> of your time, you should check out pacdiff.  It along with
> systemd-delta has saved me plenty of time when running updates in
> Arch.

That sentence contained some more examples, but I decided to strip it down
before posting the message. Some other real-life examples, which definitely
takes longer than doing a diff between two text files and reading the
manual:
Updates to the Arch Linux software RAID hook-system breaks assembly of
software RAID and hence - in my case - the ability to boot. When the server
is a headless server in a cupboard, that will be a PITA.
Same thing applies when the userspace qemu-kvm fork was suddently replaced
with the upstream qemu executable, just because some initial
Den 07/01/2013 22.36 skrev "Jameson" <imntreal at gmail.com>:
>
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 6:38 AM, Kenni Lund <kenni at kelu.dk> wrote:
> > 2013/1/6 Nick Rout <nick.rout at gmail.com>:
> >> I really hate this 2 yearly cycle of updating ubuntu distros, even on
LTS. I
> >> thought maybe a rolling release like Arch would alleviate me from
having to
> >> do that.
>
> I'm running Arch on my home server for just this reason.  I probably
> wouldn't recommend it for a commercial production environment where
> applications may require specific patch levels for support, but at
> home I really like it.
>
> > The issue with rolling release distributions on servers are that every
> > application on the server suddenly can receive a major update which
> > requires your attention. So when you perform a regular system update,
> > which you expect to spend 5 minutes on, you'll end up spending 3
> > hours, since you need to update some configuration file to be
> > compatible with the new major release of some application which was
> > updated. You can choose to avoid updating some of your applications,
> > but it will only be a matter of time until other packages on the
> > system becomes incompatible with your hold-back packages, and hence
> > forcing you to update the packages anyway.
>
> If updating config files for package updates is chewing up that much
> of your time, you should check out pacdiff.  It along with
> systemd-delta has saved me plenty of time when running updates in
> Arch.
>
> =-Jameson
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20130108/1e5ccee0/attachment.html>