On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 07:26, David Mummery wrote: > Hi all. > We've been running RH8 and LTSP-3 successfully for about a year and > want to upgrade to Fedora-Core-1 and LTSP-4. The RH* - Fedora upgrade > has to be done using the CD's as our internet pipe is just too thin > to allow a reasonable download window. > > I can't see many major gripes in doing this, but has anyone on the list > tried a similar upgrade with or without success? > > Unfortunately can't replicate our production network properly > because we run on a dual processor Fujitsu server...doesn't quite > match my Athlon 700 :( > > I've performed an install of LTSP-4 on a box previously running LTSP-3 > and was very impressed with the wget based installer. > > Thanks in advance. > > David Mummery > Access IT Ltd.
David, I would not recommend upgrading to Fedora, for three reasons: 1) Upgrades tend to leave a lot of chaff behind. 2) If the upgrade fails partway through, you're toast 3) Red Hat says "Don't do it." Upgrades are OK for personal machines; if things go wrong later, you can re-install at your leisure. I would never upgrade a production server like this. I've seen apps work through two upgrades and then fail after the third, because (unbeknownst to some) they depended on some odd quirk or compatibility library. Do a clean install (format all partitions), reinstall all apps you need, and don't install any compatibility libraries unless you just can't help it. Make your Athlon the production server for the day, do a clean install on the Fujitsu server, test it, and then move the Fujitsu back into production. You will need to tell everyone what's going on at least a week in advance, including a warning about slow computers. Also, tell them it will take a week; that gives you time to test everything, and also gives you wiggle room in case you hit a snag. If you get it done in a day, great. The worst thing you can do is start the upgrade late on a Friday, spend all weekend trying without success to get the server upgraded, and have everyone griping at you Monday morning because things aren't working; you'll be exhausted, and the rest of the staff will be mad at you. It's much better to be able to take your time, test things properly, and have a fallback plan if, for example, a critical app isn't happy on Fedora (not likely, but you won't know until you try). A last tip: before you start, make a list of every app you want on the server. For every app, have a written test plan. If you write the plan out, it's much easier to get someone to help, since you can tell them to do steps 7, 8, and 11 rather than explain what needs to be done. If you use ODBC, your plan should include opening every table or query. The tests don't need to be too elaborate; something as simple as "run 'oowriter /staff/letters/foo'; make sure there are no errors and that the letter is correct". For OpenOffice.org, open one document of each type you use. -David -- David Johnston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Little Bald Consulting, LLC ------------------------------------------------------- The SF.Net email is sponsored by EclipseCon 2004 Premiere Conference on Open Tools Development and Integration See the breadth of Eclipse activity. February 3-5 in Anaheim, CA. http://www.eclipsecon.org/osdn _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
