Re: Owl-current on production server

From: Solar Designer (solar@private)
Date: Tue Nov 13 2001 - 16:31:03 PST


On Wed, Nov 14, 2001 at 06:46:02AM +0700, Ai ES wrote:

Hi,

> Is this possible to using Owl current on a production server?

We do.  I believe most people who install Owl only take current.  In
fact, I'm afraid the -stable, while based on previously tested code,
isn't getting enough use and testing now.

ftp.ru.openwall.com is always running today's current, before that
even propagates to all of the mirrors.  {www,ftp}.openwall.com are
hosted on a machine that is updated to Owl-current every few months.

We'll probably deprecate the 0.1-stable soon and start a 0.2-stable
based on -current instead.  This will definitely be after tcb, but
maybe before glibc 2.2.x.

> If we use current, what is the drawback?

Well, sometimes bugs get in, get reported, and get resolved in a few
days.  Last time the November, 3 snapshot wouldn't installworld due to
an unresolved package dependency that accidentally got in.

But in general there has been nothing really nasty in -current that
got to the FTP mirrors (I only let the stuff through to the mirrors
when I believe the system as a whole is in a consistent state).

We're going to do a few fairly significant changes to core system
components soon (the move to tcb, our alternate password shadowing
scheme, has already started this Monday; I'll do it step-by-step,
though), but I'll do my best to have this go smoothly as well.  We
even try to test that the whole system still rebuilds from source when
we update development tools or libraries or move to a new kernel
version with its updated header files (last time on November, 8, after
the bison update).

> Or, what is the best way to using Owl on a production server?

-current + a competent admin + willingness to installworld new stuff
once in a while is a reasonable combination for the present time.

> Userland package not yet ready to support 2.4 kernel. Is there any chance to use 2.4 kernel on Owl?

Most things appear to work in practice.  Including insmod.  But I'm
not using 2.4 kernels in production yet, nor do I recommend doing so.

-- 
/sd



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