Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:33:27 -0600 From: "illoai@gmail.com" <illoai@gmail.com> To: "pobox@verysmall.org" <pobox@verysmall.org>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: advice on upgrading production FreeBSD 5.4 Message-ID: <d7195cff0602262133o712f52b5qae8fce16edf8dabe@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <cb5206420602261419y519ea8e5g972fe3fc15a04488@mail.gmail.com> References: <4401F701.10202@verysmall.org> <cb5206420602261419y519ea8e5g972fe3fc15a04488@mail.gmail.com>
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On 2/26/06, Andrew Pantyukhin <infofarmer@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2/26/06, pobox@verysmall.org <pobox@verysmall.org> wrote: > > I inherited a production FreeBSD 5.4 used as a web/mail server (Apache, > > PostgreSQL, php, qmail, vpopmail, Courier). Could anybody help me with > > information about a web resource on upgrading such system (all, OS only > > or component by component) with minimum downtime. I looked into cvsup > > and portupgrade - is this the right way for production systems or is > > there another one? For example is it possible to have the older version > > running until the new one downloads/compiles and then to replace it > > within seconds? Also - what if the new version does not work correctly = - > > is it possible to keep the old and revert to it. > > First, you'd better upgrade to 6.1. Read /usr/src/UPDATING > and handbook for that. > I'm not sure if I had a working machine that was up on its security patches that I would upgrade, where admittedly 5.4 to 6.x is not a huge jump (compared to 4 -> 5 or even 3 -> 4). Assuming all goes well your down- time should be the time it takes the server to reboot, but if (very big) your buildworld has some hidden fault (personal experience when /bin/sh would dump core on every invocation, very difficult to fix) you could be looking at a couple of days of downtime. Whereas I believe that the 6.x series is much better than 5.x, I'm not convinced that the risk/reward payoff is that great, doubly so given that it's a production machine. 5.4, while obsolete from a numerical standpoint, will be useable for a long while: years, probably. If the hardware itself is nothing special, or replaceable for less than the cost of downtime, you might look into putting up a second server running the new software, test carefully for a week or so, and then gracefully transition. All of this is speculation. As a postscript: the tales of 5.x to 6.x upgrades have been for the most part very painless, but in production systems conservatism leads to happy customers. -- --
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