On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 08:59:37AM -0700, Herb French wrote: > Esteemed Colleagues- > > I have two Red Hat boxes that have been in use for several years as web > servers, using the L.A.M.P. approach. > > (1) running RH 7.3 > (1) running RH 9 > > My network folks are now taking a much stronger look at everything attached > to the network, and their Foundstone scan has identified several issues > with my Linux web servers. Mostly issues with OpenSSH and PHP. > > Would it seems logical to go ahead and upgrade these to Fedora Core 5? > > If so, has anyone made the jump from RH 7.3/9 to Fedora Core 5? > Other than a complete backup, could someone outline the process? > Any "beware" issues? > > Thanks!
Qualifications: Lots of RH upgrades and reinstalls, but mostly the home version of the time (not RHEL). OK Your first situation 7.3 -> FC 5 is a jump of a couple of intermediate versions, and I strongly recommend a reinstall rather than an upgrade. Frankly, if anything strategic is running on the 7.3, you should at least have a full system image and a plan to restore if the jump breaks necessary services. It would be more prudent to do a POC on a clone image on a separate box. Here's why. In my experience, upgrades from X to X+1 in RH are usually good enough for the home user, but they always leave some details straggling, usually in such things as user configurations not matching or fully utilizing new functionality, especially in Gnome (my chosen poison). Reinstalls also carry risks because before starting, you need to preserve many configuration files for reference in returning the new install to its previous state. It can be very embarrassing if you forget to preserve something obscure but important (used to be that X configuration files were almost always customized, especially on laptops, and woe to he who forgot to make a floppy copy). I fully subscribe to the philosophy of not upgrading until forced to by needed features in the new stuff or emerging incompatibilities between boxes. Finally, some deal with this by using yum/apt-get to constantly update from errata and respins, which spreads the risk out over small, usually well tested steps. I will let them comment on how this meters out the pain. Good luck, -- Lan Barnes Linux Guy, SCM Specialist Tcl/Tk Enthusiast It's expensive, but worth every penny. I'd like to have several explosions. He loved explosions. - Anita Thompson, widow of Hunter S. Thompson, on having his ashes shot from a cannon -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-newbie
