[ale] Red Hat upgrades?

[James Sumners]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Crawford Rainwater
<crawford.rainwater at linux-etc.com> wrote:
> James (Sumner):
>
> Jim (Kinney) beat me to this unfortunately, but I will second what he stated below.
>
> As a side thought (granted, a little sadistic perhaps too...but I am a Gentoo type as well ;-) ), make a snapshot or copy of your virtual machine environment, and do a RHEL 4 -> RHEL 5 (additional snapshot for sanity purposes) then RHEL 5 -> RHEL 6 upgrade on it to see what happens.  I would be curious how your application from RHEL4 fairs with such an upgrade process in "shooting from the hip".

This is my plan. I just wanted to get upgrade path advice from people
who actually use, and like, this OS first. As for the application, it
should, in theory, work fine as long as correct versions of Java are
installed (yes, versions plural). But nothing works according to
theory with this POS.

>
> Though for "stability", Jim's methodology is sound.  However and as noted, it will be a bit involved QA wise.
>
> FWIW.
>

I disagree with the assertion that stability comes with the cost of
doing a fresh install every release. I've been upgrading Debian
release-to-release since Slink with not one single stability problem.
Of course there is planning involved and things change drastically.
But that's why the upgrade process includes notices and prompts with
diff access. You still have to do your homework, but you don't have to
pretend it's 1975.

Even crappy OSes can do upgrades[1] (with surprisingly good results).

[1] -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14

-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
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