[PLUG] Recovery mess...

drew wymore drew.wymore at gmail.com
Sat Nov 29 15:22:02 UTC 2008


On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 3:08 AM, someone <plug_1 at robinson-west.com> wrote:

> Well, Fedora Core 3 isn't supported anymore and I don't think it is
> possible
> to grab all the updates for it.  I tried to upgrade glibc and ended up
> hosing it.  Yikes!  Some quick thinking and I've temporarily got the
> machine back up.  I installed Fedora Core 3 again on the backup
> partition minimal installation and wholesale copied /lib and /usr/lib.
>
> I'm debating on how to upgrade this machine and I probably should because
> it is in a sorry state.  There are so many customizations though.  What
> is the best way to migrate logs and email?  I'm thinking of going to
> Fedora 9/10 or CentOS 5.  I have network root servers running off of
> this box, so I have a lot of stuff to replace when I upgrade.
>
> Concerning updates, they are a real nightmare considering that Linux is so
> stable in general that I may go for years between major upgrades.  Has
> anyone
> created their own local yum repository seeded from all the repositories
> that
> are typically used?  Dependencies become problematic when you do upgrades.
> I had an upgraded glibc and couldn't get flash installed.  Turns out, I
> needed
> the upgraded glibc and a few other upgrades I don't have.
>
> Keeping older Linux distributions makes sense considering that Linux
> in general has been getting more memory and resource intensive over
> time.  For how much longer will a Pentium III be adequate for Linux?
> Are the days of the 486 mail
> server past now?  There should be some focus on tailoring future Linux
> distributions to be only as fancy and resource intensive as the computer
> they
> are installed on can handle.  Should Linux need more powerful hardware
> from one
> year to the next?  Gnome and KDE seem pretty mature, how about cutting
> their
> resource use in half without significant feature loss? Just because
> today's computers have more memory and processing power, there is no
> need to waste it.
>
> I need to figure out how to migrate this major server to a supported Linux
> distribution that is more current.  I've been dreading this.
>
>      Michael C. Robinson
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------


tar or rsync for the files you need to keep. I've used tar a few times to
back up an entire qmail install and it worked without issue, just remember
to use the p switch to preserve permissions on what you're backing up.

I don't use yum/apt etc since I use Slackware (Rich and I are sinners
right?) I build everything from source that doesn't come with the stoack
install or if I do any customization and then create a script to do the
download/build foo and keep a package handy in a subversion repo for future
upgrades or what have you.


Cheers,
Drew-



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