Re: 2.2 kernel to 2.6 on a live public facing webserver

In comp.os.linux.misc Andy <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
In short:

What issues am I likely to face when moving a live web hosting machine
from 2.2 to 2.6 kernel?
[..]
Two issues here:
1) the machines are making money at the moment and I don't want to bring
thousands of websites down.
I'm guessing that I would move the sites a few at a time and update the
zonefiles to point to the new machine.
any hints here?

Sounds scaring and is likely to produce more problems then
anything else. The following is how I would go about it and yes I
have been doing this numerous times):

1. Built up a new box with different IP. Ensure anything works as
expected. Have a full rsync mirror of the old system on another
system near.

2. Check logs for low traffic times. Ensure changes to web content
are made on both during setup. Reboot the new system a few times
to ensure any service comes up automatically. Prepare network
configuration files/etc (ssh host key!) on the new system with
the settings of the old.

3. During the low traffic time, take a last rsync snapshot
(should be fast, changes are likely to be minimal) shutdown the
old system and ping it from another xterm, as soon as it doesn't
answer anymore, restart the network on the new box. Restart
services that are bound to the IP.

4. Ensure none restarts the old box!

5. Voila, you should be up and running with a downtime of about
10 seconds. Check with a browser from the internet things are
working as expected, keep an eye on the logs.

Good luck

[..]

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@xxxxxxxxxx | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 347: The rubber band broke
.

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