[WBEL-users] RedHat 9 migration?

[John Morris]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Kurt Raschke wrote:

> So, I have been evaluating the RHEL rebuild projects.  However, I'm
> not sure if any of the three projects could be used to upgrade from
> RedHat 9, as I would really rather not reinstall these servers.
> Additionally, assuming there even is a viable upgrade path, then which
> RHEL rebuild project should I go with?

I had success upgrading from RH7.3 to WBEL3, but I did have to manually 
fix several glitches.  Still much better than installing everything from 
scratch.  So I'd say if your UNIX/Linux skills are above average you will 
probably not run into anything you can't overcome.  If all you have are 
newly minted RHCEs and MCSEs trying to learn, better make arrangements for 
a good UNIXhead to be on call in case you get stuck.  And of course a FULL 
backup should go without saying.  I migrated to a new machine at the same 
time, which gave me the warm fuzzy feeling that if I couldn't get the new 
box going before the deadline I could always just plug the network cable 
back into the old one and punch the power button.

As for which rebuild, they all seem to be fairly similar.  The differences 
are subtle:

With WhiteBox I'm trying to stay as close as I can to RHEL3, but think
that having it self host is important also.  I just think an Open Source
OS should be self hosting; what good is the source if it won't build?  
One benefit of this is that if I disappear it shouldn't be hard for anyone
with a working WBEL installation to rebuild errata that will match.

Tao appears to have went to a lot more effort to make their rebuild an
exact copy, examining each package and trying to determine if it was built
on RH9 or RHEL and recreating that environment to rebuild that package in.  
Pro: more exact clone.  Con: harder to build your own packages should the
need arise.

Centos is a side project at the cAos project, I get the impression it is
something to ship while they get the cAos distribution up to "enterprise"  
quality.  Haven't dug too deep into their build philosophy.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris        This post is 100% M$ Free!
Geekcode 3.1:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ W++ w--- Y++ b++ 5+++ R tv- e* r