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Date:      Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:36:46 -0600
From:      Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com>
To:        FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Is FreeBSD 9 Production Ready?
Message-ID:  <50B1681E.8070700@tundraware.com>
In-Reply-To: <20121125065854.1198fee8@X220.ovitrap.com>
References:  <50B0F80B.6090400@tundraware.com> <20121125065854.1198fee8@X220.ovitrap.com>

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On 11/24/2012 05:58 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:38:35 -0600
> Tim Daneliuk <tundra@tundraware.com> wrote:
>
>> I am currently running FBSD 8.3-STABLE on a production server that
>> provides http, dns, smtp, and so on for a small domain.  This is not
>> a high arrival rate environment but it does need to be rock solid
>> (which FBSD 4-8 have been).
>
> why would you like to break a running system?

That's exactly what I don't want to do.

>>
>> I am contemplating moving to the FBSD 9 family.  Is this branch ready
>
> I would stay with 8.x until the end of its support and move only then
> to a new branch. It could be then 9.x or 10.y. I would then - but only
> then - prefer the 10.y branch.
>
> I retired my 7.4 only because of lightning strike this spring.
>
> Robustness is my main goal here. Any change which brings only the risk
> is avoided.

I used to take this approach.  However, I discovered the pain of fixing
a configuration that jumped several major releases was way higher than
tracking them each as they became stable.  I did the 9.1-PRE upgrade today
and - once the new system was compiled and ready to be installed - had
only very minor conversion issues.

In my case, the most painful part of conversion is the mail infrastructure.  The
server in question is the domain's mail server and it has a LOT of moving
parts with custom configurations: sendmail, greylisting, mailscanner, spam
assassin, mailman, SASL ...   That is pretty much always what breaks.  Doing
smaller "leaps" tends to make this more tractable to control.


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Tim Daneliuk     tundra@tundraware.com
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/




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