Re: Compelling reasons to upgrade from RH 6.0

From: Moe Trin (ibuprofin_at_painkiller.example.tld)
Date: 09/01/05

  • Next message: Jskud: "Re: Norton Ghost 2003 and FC3" 
    Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:32:53 -0500

    In the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.redhat, in article
    <obf9h1hhvg0inassln3hkdvu8un599u0lt@4ax.com>, Ian East wrote:

    >I have to do a hardware upgrade and our current OS is RedHat 6.0. My
    >boss is insistent on trying to get this OS image to run on a dual
    >Xeon/7501 based platform.

    Get him to sign a waiver absolving you of all responsibility - and
    accepting all blame should the box ever be r00ted.

    >Aside from the obvious reasons that this OS is no longer supported and
    >I'm having major problems with driver support,

    6.0 was the introduction of the 2.2 kernel. We skipped both 6.0 AND 6.1
    for an update path, and went from 5.2 to 6.2. I suppose 6.0 was better
    than 7.0, but that's not really saying much, as 7.0 was the worst release
    they ever had.

    >what are other reasons it would be a good idea to upgrade to

    You mean something like the SSH exploit that has been out there since
    November 2001? And the fact that you can't update to exclude that
    because no one is building stuff that use that ancient library version?

    >FC or Debian?

    Debian is perhaps longer between version meaning longer in the support
    tree, but most common distributions today have a support life of about
    two years. Pay your money - take your pick.

    >I keep trying to talk sense into him but keep getting the runaround that
    >it's too hard to upgrade, requires too much retooling, etc...

    I'd bail - working for someone that clueless is not worth the stomach
    acid. Yes, it takes a long time to replace a distribution. We spend
    about two weeks "playing" with a new release in the test lab, trying to
    reach some consensus of what the new installs will look like. When we
    agree, we put this install on a handful of systems that mirror the real
    life systems out in production. We watch things for a full tape backup
    cycle (8 weeks). If nothing blows up, or is otherwise a show stopper, we
    come in over a weekend, and pour it over the rest of the world. The
    following Monday might be a little exciting, but in ten years, we've
    only had to roll back one update (because the printing wouldn't work
    reliably - never did figure out why).

    >Basically what I would love to find is somekind of major hardware
    >incompatibility, exploit, or something that would be a definitive reason
    >to use a newer OS so I won't have to waste any more time on trying to get
    >this to work.

    There were a number of exploits back then - but 6.0 has been unsupported
    for four years, and the skript kiddiez are not expecting to find crap
    that old. But no one is building software that runs under that ancient
    version. Think libraries (I'm pushing memory here, but I think there was
    an errata released the same day the distribution was released), the kernel
    (it ended life with 2.2.17) - hell, even rpm itself is changed, and the
    original version is not compatible with "current" packages. What's worse
    is that there was an intermediate step (vaguely 3.0 out of box, 3.0.5
    would update that, final was 3.0.6 but 3.0 didn't know how to install 3.0.6
    and only 3.0.5 did) that was _required_ to reach the last supported
    configuration.

            Old guy

  • Next message: Jskud: "Re: Norton Ghost 2003 and FC3"

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