Re: updating remote 2.5 to current

[Clifton Royston <cliftonr@lava.net>]

On Fri, Dec 10, 1999 at 09:33:07PM -0600, David Uhring wrote:
[...]
> > a machine in an unattended machine room with no way to power cycle or reboot 
> > out of band is also not ready for operational prime time.

  To play devil's advocate, power cycling or rebooting doesn't help if
you end up unable to boot without sitting someone down at the keyboard
and monitor.  I haven't looked into the kernel to see if one can
configure i386/OpenBSD to install with serial console only.  (If one
can, that would of course have been a very good first step.)
 
> Like Theo told the guy, put NT on the machine, although this thread
> is starting to get a little humorous.  If he did install NT, maybe we
> wouldn't have to see this crap anymore.

  It doesn't improve the image of UNIX, BSD, or OpenBSD specifically,
to hear the developers make implied claims that it's less stable or
reliable than Windows NT.

  FWIW, I don't believe that it is, but that is the *content* of what
you were saying (as opposed to the apparent meaning of: buzz off and
don't bother complaining about anything or suggesting development
directions.) OTOH, the discussion has given me some factual basis for
believing I'd be better off deploying BSD/OS if I locate servers at our
remote POPs (which are, of course, set up with multiple out-of-band
power cycle and serial console connections.) We have been able to
successfully upgrade BSD/OS at our main site between major versions
(e.g. 3.1 to 4.0.1) by applying mods from a regular SSH login and doing
a normal reboot, with no disaster recovery or console intervention
needed.

  It's not an unreasonable goal for a BSD-based OS to be safe to
upgrade remotely.  It's not even unreasonable to expect a security-
oriented OS to be remotely upgradable by the administrator via secure
network connections.  All IMHO, and yes, I did note the comments saying
that this particular upgrade was something of a "worst-case" in terms
of the kinds of changes rolled into it and the difficulty of upgrade.

<asbestos>
  -- Clifton
</asbestos>

-- 
 Clifton Royston  --  LavaNet Systems Architect --  cliftonr@lava.net
        "An absolute monarch would be absolutely wise and good.  
           But no man is strong enough to have no interest.  
             Therefore the best king would be Pure Chance.  
              It is Pure Chance that rules the Universe; 
          therefore, and only therefore, life is good." - AC