Richard Elling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said >>>> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005, Paul Walsh wrote: >>>> >>>> > I remember being told by the tutor on a Solaris SysAdmin course to >>>> > always choose "Entire distribution + OEM support" Nowadays I'm not so >>>> >>>> I think that's very poor advice. >>> >>>In general, this is good advice...
It shouldn't be. The fact that it may be good advice illustrates that there is a real problem underneath. >>>> > sure. A system being set up as a DNS server for example would ideally >>>> > be stripped to the bare bones, with only SSH and DNS access being >>>> > required. >>>> >>>> Right. Start with the minimum and work up. >>> >>>In this specific case, perhaps yes. But there is more volume of general cases >>>than specific cases. >>> >>>The problem with starting from the bottom and working up is that you'll >>>potentially spend hundreds of man-hours trying to get to your goal. And >>>after you arrive, you will find the result hard to maintain. The >>>interdependencies between packages are very complex and getting more >>>complex over time. Then surely the completely arbitrary way that Solaris is split into packages needs to be fixed. Why on earth does gnome/jds come in 200 odd separate packages? Does the split of files make any sense? I would make every effort to reduce the number of packages in a Solaris distribution to more manageable levels. Certainly organising them by function rather than by their engineering origin would help. Fewer packages better organised would make the work of systems administrators much easier, would reduce the potential support problems caused by the diversity of possible configurations, and would make it much easier to produce minimal configurations that work. I have run production nodes with about 85 packages (less that 10% of the full install) without any noticeable loss of capability (clearly a desktop can't get down this low as a rule). But as a rule I now start with the full install and slash away at it until I get to something that looks acceptable. I would much rather build up from the base, but that's much harder to maintain in the face of changes - it shouldn't be. -Peter Tribble MRC Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
