On Thu, 4 Nov 2010, Wes Modes wrote:
I CAN do a manual install of RT3.8 using the Best Practical install scripts. It is not terribly hard. However, the long-term costs of this
Hi Wes. One of the biggest problems here is often over-looked. When you build the app yourself you are taking over management of security updates, rather than relying on the distro maintainer to do it (but you should always keep an eye on report of serious vulnerabilities anyway).
are large. The install scripts put all the binaries, configuration files, and libraries in the wrong places for RHEL/CentOS, and working outside the package manager means files could be clobbered at any time.
Package manager should completely avoid touching some parts of the file system including /opt and /usr/local. This is deliberate to avoid exactly this problem (custom apps being clobbered).
I always try to keep custom modifications to a minimum because of the increased security overhead. If I have to build a custom app I will normally try to put it on a dedicated virtual box so that any customisations I have to do don't effect other apps (but then I make extensive use of virtualisation anyway).
Additionally, the cost of migration of old content from 3.6 to 3.8 is unknown.
And check your data throughly after the upgrade. More than once I've seen upgrades appear to go successfully but have problems discovered later - when it is too late to go back.
Cheers, Rob -- Email: rob...@timetraveller.org Linux counter ID #16440 IRC: Solver (OFTC & Freenode) Web: http://www.practicalsysadmin.com Contributing member of Software in the Public Interest (http://spi-inc.org/) Open Source: The revolution that silently changed the world
