Re: upgrading to RHL7.3

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Jon  Miller wrote:

> Just want to get the lists overall view of upgrading from RHL7.1 to RHL7.3.  In the past I've always rebuilt the server, I'm wondering what the groups input on upgrading within version (ex from 7.1 to 7.3) vs upgrading from version to version ex:7.1 to 8.0 or even 9.0.

Depends on the purpose of the machine.  If it is a critical server, you
should stage the upgrade to find the 'gotchas' before doing it on the
machine.  Going from 7.1 to 7.3 is rather minor; I do not recall any real
big issues.  Going to 8.0 or 9 there are some changes that you may have
made as patches to 7.1 and things will be fine; but if it runs sendmail or
BIND and you have not kept up, then changes may mean you have a little
work to get things running as before.   For example, I used to use
serials in BIND that were YYYYMMDDHHMM ; BIND 9.x does not like serials
that long so had to backtrack and use YYYYMMDDxy and all BIND servers for
a particular zone had to be changed simultaneously.

Overall, unless the machine is for testing it is best to upgrade
infrequently.  In this case, it is best to upgrade to the highest stable
version possible so that the machine current for the longest possible
time.

> Also what happen to 8.1?

No such thing.  There was 8.0.95 or something like that, which was
'Phoebe', the BETA for 9.  We all expected RH to call it 8.1 but RH
marketing decided to call it 9.  Version numbers are always a marketing
call; I suspect that this is RH 9 to match the current version of
Solaris.  It is common for marketing departments to want to match or
exceed the version number of the perceived competition, playing on
the psychology that bigger/higher is better. Sometimes versions are chosen
for other equally bogus reasons, e.g., contractual or licensing issues.
Versions are arbitrary, who cares.  Let the marketing folks play their
game ...

- rick -