On 03/12 10:14 , Stephen Joyce wrote: > Personally, after years of installing everything from source, I now use > packages for most software.
I went through the same process myself, after spending a lot of time doing things the hard way, then learning from people who are more experienced than myself. > Debs, RPMs, or some other package format, and the > associated tools, are almost mandatory if you manage more than 5 or so > machines. And when you get to 100 or more, even some of the vendors' tools > must be, ahem, coerced, to make them work well without babysitting them. Or else you spend a lot of time babysitting the differences between all the machines (which is what I do); even with packages to help you along the way. > The only things I install from source and don't create a .deb for are > mission-critical server software. This includes things like imapd, > my webmail server, and yes.. backuppc and backuppc4afs > (http://backuppc4afs.sourceforge.net) </plug :-)> Those I just document to > hell and back. Lack of documentation may be the biggest problem with software compiled from tarballs. I'd prefer that documentation be done automatically tho; because metal and plastic machines are less prone to errors than meat machines (humans) are. I'm sure your fellow administrators and successors will thank you for your documentation. :) -- Carl Soderstrom Systems Administrator Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
