Re: rpm question...

From: Nico Kadel-Garcia (nkadel_at_comcast.net)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:08:10 -0500

"Jean-David Beyer" <jdbeyer@exit109.com> wrote in message
news:10u0d5cglnphl3e@corp.supernews.com...
> Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:JqGdnelKLbreUELcRVn-qA@comcast.com...
>>
>>><tsiwut@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>>news:1105172936.675955.50820@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>>
>>>>I have a *large* repository of rpm updates on an ftp server that i use
>>>>to update my RedHat ES3 servers after the OS install, I use the command
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>rpm -Uvh ftp://server/path/to/*.rpm
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>problem is, the number of rpm files has grown enormously, I am sure a
>>>>lot of them are not being installed.
>>>
>>>ES 3 is out? Good.
>>
>>
>> Excuse me, ES 3 has been out for a while. I've been waiting on ES 4,
>> which has been slow in arrival.
> How slow? IIRC, ES3 came out in late 2003. One of the features of the RHEL
> distributions is their long life. They do not come out with frequent new
> releases. Their customers want stability, not the latest bells and
> whistles. Here is part of what they say about it:

It's been over a year. The 2.6 kernel is a big deal for server grade
hardware, especially SMP and drivers for recent devices, and they need to
move forward with that to provide corporate support. for it. I recognize
that Fedora Core is where they do their bleeding edge work, and that's just
fine. But I'm actually suggesting Beowulf users use Fedora Core rather than
RHEL because of the tardiness of the performance updates for heavy-duty iron
in RHEL.

>> Stability
>>
>> 12-18 month release cycle and seven years of support for every version.
>> Upgradeability
>>
>> Upgrades to new versions are included with every Red Hat Enterprise Linux
>> subscription.

Well, yes. And if the next version isn't out until 18 months or 24 months
after a major feature change such as the 2.6 kernel, theree's no point in
ever getting it for new hardware, since any hardware that RHEL will actually
run on is near the end of its useful life as high end hardware.

18 months is too damn long for a modern release cycle, and their lack of ISO
updates makes it a nightmare to install on even slightly more recent
hardware. I bless to all the heavens the guy doing whiteboxlinux.org, who
takes RHEL SRPM's and all the updates and cleanly rebundles them. RedHat
should absolutely hire him to do this for RHEL commercially.

Relevant Pages

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