Re: tracking -stable in the enterprise

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Jo Rhett <jrhett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 25, 2008, at 3:46 AM, Peter Wemm wrote:

Correct. We roll our own build snapshots periodically, but we also
keep a pretty careful eye on what's going on in the -stable branches.

Okay, that makes sense to me ;-)

I mean, I guess Yahoo has enough resources to literally run every commit
to
-stable through a full test cycle and push it out to every machine, but
my

No. Why on earth would we do that? if we wanted to cause ourselves
that much pain for no good reason, we'd go get a pencil and stab
ourselves in the eye.

Yes, we are definitely on the same page. Thanks for the clarification ;-)

We don't upgrade machines that have been deployed unless there is a
good reason to.

Do you deploy machines for longer than 1 year? How do you deal with
security patches in the longer term?

I think we still have FreeBSD-3.x machines in production. I know we
have FreeBSD-4.3. 99.9% of security issues don't affect us. We have
our own package system built on top of FreeBSD's pkg_add format and
have the ability to push packages to machines. If circumstances
warrant it, we can push a fix for something. It'll either push a new
binary or be a source patch that is compiled directly on the machines
in question. The machines run a custom software stack. More often
we push fixes for driver or performance fixes or things like timezone
updates.

The important thing is that we don't disturb machines that are running
happily. Hardware vendors are constantly messing with firmware, bugs
in silicon, etc etc. This is an issue for NEW installs, usually not
existing machines. Usually.

--
Peter Wemm - peter@xxxxxxxx; peter@xxxxxxxxxxx; peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; KI6FJV
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
themselves upon execution." -- Robert Sewell
_______________________________________________
freebsd-stable@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Out-dated theory
    ... John M Ward wrote: ... are like machines, ... appropriate to push those buttons. ... within arcane expressions? ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Re: OT: Value of an industrial electrician apprenticeship
    ... Instrumentation apprentice at a paper mill and so far it doesn't seem to ... this time due to the fact that troubleshooting the machines we had was ... As an Auto tech, I had a lot of responsibility. ... but the harder I push, ...
    (rec.crafts.metalworking)
  • Re: OT: Value of an industrial electrician apprenticeship
    ... Your "pushing" may not be appreciated by your seniors. ... this time due to the fact that troubleshooting the machines we had was ... As an Auto tech, I had a lot of responsibility. ... but the harder I push, ...
    (rec.crafts.metalworking)
  • Re: Infamous "svchost" Automatic Updates horrors continue
    ... the only one you will need to push is here: ... That hotfix and the new Update Agent should probably be upgraded on all ... machines to prevent the occurance of the 'svchost' related issues on those ... || 2) install the WUA agent 3.0 ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsupdate)
  • Re: SMS 2003 advance client ccr retries
    ... Deleting them from the retry folder should permanently remove the CCR. ... > constantly tried to push the agent to these ghost machines. ...
    (microsoft.public.sms.admin)