hi river
i know we have talkedabout this before, but for the benefit of other users, let
me ask the obvious question: why FreeBSD and not Linux?
-- daniel
On 07.06.2011 04:04, River Tarnell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> So, this is not an announcement of any intent to change anything, I just
> want to get an idea of how people feel about two things we could,
> perhaps, change in the future:
>
> 1. ZWS to Apache on the web server
> 2. Solaris to FreeBSD on login servers
>
> #2 depends on #1, so it seems sensible to discuss both together.
>
> I don't have any strong opinion about either of these myself, but I
> would like to hear what users think.
>
> ZWS to Apache:
>
> I know it annoyed people when we moved from Apache to ZWS initially,
> because rewrite rules had to be redone, some .htaccess stuff stopped
> working, etc. At the time we were using mod_suphp for per-user (suexec)
> PHP scripts, and it was extremely inefficient; the system spent most of
> its time doing nothing. ZWS allowed us to fix the problem cheaply (no
> new hardware required), and I think for most users it worked just the
> same.
>
> Since then, two things have changed: firstly, Apache with mod_fcgid now
> has decent FastCGI support, and with only a little work could be made to
> support suexec PHP as well. Secondly, ZWS is now in maintenance, and
> won't see any further development (so it might be better to switch now,
> rather than wait until one month before ZWS support ends entirely and be
> forced to switch).
>
> With that in mind, it makes sense to consider moving back to Apache.
> The main downside is that rewrite rules would have to be converted back
> to Apache format (mod_rewrite). OTOH, .htaccess features missing from
> ZWS would be available again (I don't know if anyone actually needs
> this, but I believe at least a few users have complained about missing
> features.)
>
> Solaris to FreeBSD:
>
> Of the two changes, I think this one would actually be the less
> disruptive. For users, nearly everything would stay the same: we
> already provide the GNU userland ('ls', etc) by default (and would
> continue to do so) and the third-party software in /opt/ts would be
> identical, as would cronie, SGE, Perl/Python/..., etc.
>
> Software-wise, since nothing would really change, I don't see any
> particular advantages for users. Disadvantages: 'ps -eaf' would stop
> working ;-) and anyone with locally-compiled software (C/C++, or XS Perl
> modules, etc.) would need to recompile them.
>
> For us (admins), the main advantage is reduced maintenance overhead:
> FreeBSD releases a new minor version about once a year, and supports
> each for 2 years; each release branch only gets very infrequent updates
> for security or errata. In comparison, there is a new Solaris update
> every 6 months, and during yesterday's maintenance we installed 358 (!)
> separate patches. Oracle doesn't provide a security-updates-only
> release, and it's difficult to mix-and-match patches (e.g. to only get
> security patches).
>
> This doesn't directly affect users, but fewer OS changes should lead to
> less lengthy / disruptive maintenance and less frequent reboots. OTOH,
> I don't know if this has a noticeable impact on users at the moment, and
> the previous maintenance was the first for ~170 days.
>
> - river.
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