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Date:      Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:37:23 -0400
From:      "Tamouh H." <hakmi@rogers.com>
To:        <alex@schnarff.com>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: Should I Upgrade 5.4 -> 6.2?
Message-ID:  <20070315213710.9AB0713C46E@mx1.freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070315164706.4fy8vlmhw00kk4s8@mail.schnarff.com>

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=20
>=20
> First off, I want to thank the people who responded to my=20
> thread "Stability Issues on a 5.4-RELEASE box" a couple of=20
> weeks ago; after disabling hyperthreading, getting a clean=20
> run of Memtest back, and doing some serious fsck'ing of the=20
> disks, the box appears to now be completely stable. I'm still=20
> not sure which of the above fixed the problem...but I'll take=20
> a stable system at this point. :-)
>=20
> That said, in that thread I had asked about the advisability=20
> of upgrading to 6.2, and it was intelligently pointed out=20
> that doing so in pursuit of stability was a bad idea. Now=20
> that the box is stable, though, I'm back to the same=20
> question: should I make the upgrade, and if so, how should I do it?
>=20
> My primary driver for doing so would be to keep current=20
> enough that I'm still getting security and other patches on a=20
> regular basis, and that I can upgrade my applications from=20
> ports as necessary. If this is not an issue, then my only=20
> remaining concern would be that it's usually easier to get=20
> support on lists like this if you're running a modern version=20
> of the OS (that's certainly the case with the OpenBSD folks).
>=20
> My primary concern with upgrading is that the box is in=20
> Portland, OR, and I'm in Arlington, VA...and while the ISP is=20
> friendly, I doubt that I could count on them for major system=20
> recovery if I botch something during the upgrade. My other=20
> worry is that I don't want to break existing apps if possible=20
> (the main one I'm concerned about is Zope/Plone). This is a=20
> production box with moderate traffic, and it would be a=20
> problem if there was extensive downtime.
>=20
> Is it worth upgrading? If so, what's the best way to do so --=20
> CVSup, or some other way? Are there any major caveats if I do=20
> choose to upgrade (or choose to stay with the existing OS)?
>=20
> Thanks,
> Alex Kirk
>=20

If it is not broken, don't try to fix it! We had to upgrade from 5.4 to =
6.1 because the performance was not good, crashing issues...etc.

I advise my clients not to upgrade unless they have a performance or =
stability issue they are looking to resolve.

However, should you decide to upgrade; as everyone had said: backup! =
backup! backup!

Also, find a local service company in the city to call upon should the =
upgrade goes bad. We've upgraded many FBSD 5.4 to 6.1 with no problems =
and have always been able to SSH back to the box.

Tamouh





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