Adam D. Morley wrote:
On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 01:55:34PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Am Freitag, 16. Dezember 2005 13:06 schrieb Bernhard Reiter:
[snip]
[ Email originally send (but might be stuck in moderation)
From: Bernhard Reiter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: openpkg-users@openpkg.org
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:29:07 +0200
Subject: Support for Enterprise GNU/Linux distributions?
]
[snip]
Only RHEL3 is getting close to be supported.
It is listed as "obsolete" in OpenPKG 2.4.
So does anyone run OpenPKG 2.4 on RHEL4?
How far is fedora4 away from being supported?
[snip]
If RHEL3 is considered obsolete from the OpenPKG point of view,
how does that relate to the long support periods of enterprise distributions.
E.g. RHEL3 is supported fully to April 2006 and with security updates to 2010.
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/
Hi,
I agree that the discontinuation of RHEL3 support is problematic, to say
the least. We happen to use RHEL3 in-house, and might want to stick
OpenPKG on it. It is, however, my understanding that the reason RHEL3
stopped being supported is because of two things (from my conversation
with Ralf):
1. Lack of available hardware (hardware = $$)
2. Lack of available OS RTU/software updates ($$)
Theoretically, #2 could be solved with CentOS (or whatever that
mainstream RHEL3 rebuild is, maybe lineox even), but ideally RHEL3 is
needed. To this end, I told Ralf that we (aka my employer) could provide
a RHEL3ES cert for x86 (3yr). But we can't provide hardware.
[fwiw: rhel3 update licenses work for rhel4, so one could upgrade, since
openpkg is available on rhel4...but then you have to get on the "upgrade
treadmill" long before anyone really wants to in the enterprise world.]
I also understand why Ralf & co. needed to start the registry: if they
found that 60% of their installs were running RHEL3, then they would go
"gack! we should support it still," and so without the registry they
just don't have this knowledge. Usage simply becomes a black box.
Perhaps someone should *provide* the hardware for RHEL3, as OpenPKG already
has an offer for a update license. "Free" things like OpenPKG require
the community to provide $$/hw/sw so that things can keep going. Ralf &
co would obviously have to say, "Ok, we can manage yet another piece of
hardware/software for builds." Ideally, somebody would also provide a
VMWare license, so the hardware could do more than just run rhel3...though
that doesn't really help with 64bit.
I do think that aiming for continued support as long as the product is
supported by the vendor is a laudable goal, but without a source of
funding (or committment to hw/sw), it just can't happen.
One of my goals for next year is to try to sell the idea of OpenPKG to
my customers and co-workers. As an IBMer that's forced to support many
different OS versions (some of which are obsolete even in IBM's world,
like AIX 4.3.3) having these tools at the same release level across all
platforms makes life so much easier when problems arise. My manager is
already interested and I may be making a presentation sometime in 1Q2006
about OpenPKG's benefits. Most of my co-workers are supporting AIX 5.x
and the Linux Toolbox rpm's haven't been kept up. In fact - I had to
create an update to sudo just today because the IBM rpm was so old.
Ralph - since I have access to so many different platforms I could
probably dedicate some CPU cycles to development on OS's you don't have
access to.
Doug
______________________________________________________________________
The OpenPKG Project www.openpkg.org
User Communication List openpkg-users@openpkg.org
