On 01/24/2011 12:46 PM, RR wrote:
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Kevin P. Fleming <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    On 01/24/2011 07:29 AM, RR wrote:

        On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 4:56 AM, RR <[email protected]
        <mailto:[email protected]>
        <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:

            On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 4:06 AM, Roger Burton West
        <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
        <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:

                On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 02:58:45AM -0500, RR wrote:
         >In the meantime, does anyone have a nice way to update a
                stable/stock lenny
         >installation with the updated glibc as well as the latest kernel

                At this point the easiest option will be to upgrade to
        squeeze.

                R

            Umm yeah that might not be a smart thing to do since
        eventually all
            of this needs to run in a production environment and Squeeze is
            still in a RC mode. Would be nice if I could go to it though but
            don't think it'll be that smart esp. all other software that
        needs
            to work along with it might break too...who knows


    This a statement we hear from people periodically that just confuses
    me... they say they can't update to an 'RC' release of something
    (Linux distro, Asterisk, etc.) because they need to run in
    production mode, but they're willing to consider replacing something
    as fundamental as the Linux kernel (a bit scary) or glibc (very
    scary) instead.

haha touché Kevin :) Mate, the response to that is one word: Ignorance
:) people like me, who're not developers nor experts of the platform
have absolutely no clue what glibc actually does or the impact it
actually has. Nor do I know, as a user, how stable Squeeze RC2 really is
at this stage of its development. If I had more people in the community
say that they're running it in production, then maybe I'll just believe
them and start working with Squeeze directly instead of wasting my time
like I did trying to have it compiled in Lenny. I just believed when the
developers of Debian say that Squeeze RC2 is in "testing" and Lenny is
"stable" and decide that it's probably not a good idea to run RC2 in
production. I guess part of the thinking was that "other" software
besides {*} that needs to run on this machine "may" not even build
or run or be stable on Squeeze RC till the authors/users of that other
software state that it's been tested with it and it's stable or even
builds on it. So, people like me believe that if I upgrade ALL
components that depend on glibc and that glibc depends on to the current
version, then we'll be ok but we wouldn't have touched anything else in
the system, not realising or understanding that satsisfying dependencies
doesn't mean anything and something somewhere could just break because
of this unsolicited upgrade thus making the system more unstable. I have
really no explanation for you as to why people (incl. myself) say these
things other than just lack of insight and knowledge about the
intricacies of things like glibc and the impact it can have on the
stability of the system when upgraded out of "context". *sigh* :(

And you've made my point: You chose a specific version of Debian to run, which you are happy running in 'production'. Given that you have made that choice, you can *only* install packages that distribution provides on your system. Any other packages you install are not part of that version, and thus have not gone through the same testing/qualification processes (whatever they may be). Discussing installation of packages (any packages) from a later Debian release, or installation of a package from source that overwrites the Debian package, seems totally inconsistent with being 'in production', no matter how small or large the package may be. Each such decision must be thoroughly researched and the possible ramifications understood before any changes are made, so as to keep the system as stable as possible.

In essence, this is somewhat like buying a car with a high efficiency powertrain because you want to save fuel, but then later complaining that it doesn't accelerate as fast as you'd like... so you make plans to replace the engine. Sure, you can do it, but you've defeated the purpose of the choice you made in the first place :-)

--
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
skype: kpfleming | jabber: [email protected]
Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org

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