Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.
Art Age Software wrote: > I'm sorry, but you are missing the point. I never said 8.0.12 is > perfect. But it serves a different purpose from 8.2.x and is the > correct choice for an enterprise distro such as CentOS. Don't you think it is the developers of CentOS who should decide what goes in it. I am WELL aware of what he purpose of CentOS is. I use it in production on hundreds of servers all over the world. In the just released RHEL-5.2 they have moved to firefox-3b5 (a BETA version), and thunderbird-2 from firefox-1.5 and thnderbird-1.5. They moved from OpenOffice-2.0 to 2.3. They upgraded xen to 3.1. There are several release candidate versions of software in RHEL-5, including alsa, dmraid and autofs (among others). That is what distros do ... decide what we are going to publish, then test and release it. > > The 8.0.x branch is the **stable** branch. It gets bug fixes and > security fixes only, **not** new feature development. It is inherently > more stable than the 8.2 branch. > Lets see what the DRBD developers say about that. My understanding is that BOTH are stable. Maybe I am wrong. > We choose to run CentOS, not Fedora, for our production systems > specifically because it is an **enterprise distro** and we expect it > to adhere to a release/update policy consistent with an enterprise > distro. Thanks for your advise ... I am well aware what should be in CentOS as I have been maintaining 3 versions of it for 5 years. > > DRBD 8.2.x is where the bleeding edge feature development happens, and > it is much more appropriate for Fedora or maybe for CentOSPlus. But > IMHO, it does not belong in CentOS as the **only** DRBD option. Again ... don't you think that the people who test and develop the software should decide what goes in it? > > On production systems, we cannot afford the risk inherent in upgrading > such a mission-critical part of our deployment infrastructure (DRBD) > to a version that is under active feature development. With every new > feature added to DRBD 8.2, there is a higher probability of something > breaking (i.e. regressions or new bugs appearing). This possibility is > minimized in the 8.0.x branch. Clearly, the DRBD developers understand > this or they would not offer two branches. I am also looking at maintainability for the future however. In CentOS-4, the drbd-0.7.x that is included is going to be unmaintained by the DRBD devels soon, and then those people will have no more updates. There will be 4 more years of CentOS-4 support, but drbd is stuck a 0.7.25. The will have to do a risky upgrade to drbd82 now because if this. The same thing is likely to happen to the 8.0 branch too. However that should never happen to the 8.2 branch (at least the way I understand it). > >>> But since currently they are the same protocol and that you can upgrade with yum upgrade to get the newer version without having to do anything more than you do to install 8.2 I am not sure what the problem is. (There is no more steps required to move to drbd82 that to upgrade drbd to 8.0.12) > > This is not a technical issue - it is a policy issue. Yes, technically > an upgrade is possible. But that does not mean that it is the correct > course of action. Those of us maintaining production systems have > strict policies in effect pertaining to upgrades, for the purpose of > maintaining stability and availability of our production systems. By > forcing us to move from 8.0.x to 8.2.x, those policies are violated. > An enterprise distro like CentOS is **not** supposed to make those > types of policy decisions on behalf of its users. Do you think that the people who build CentOS don't maintain production systems? Do you think that we don't use the software that we produce. I have many DRBD pairs that I maintain on RHEL-4, RHEL-5, CentOS-4 and CentOS-5. Several other CentOS developers maintain DRBD pairs all over the world. I had MANY requests to upgrade DRBD to version 8.2. I am sorry if you do not agree with me on package version, BUT, the DRBD developers SAY that 8.2 IS stable. They also roll changes into 8.0.x first for testing .. THEN they roll them into 8.2.x. In fact, the 8.0.12 changes will be in 8.2.6, which will be released soon. One could argue that since 8.0 things get tested before inclusion into 8.2, that it is 8.2 that is more stable. Regardless I'll listen what the DRBD devels say, but my understanding is that 8.2 is stable in much the same way as the 2.6 kernel ... there will be development while it is maintained as stable. So, 3 years down the road, when they decide to not maintain 8.0 any more, and when there are still 4 years left for CentOS-5, AND when the upgrade from 8.0 to 8.2 is no longer automatic because of protocol changes, then you MIGHT appreciate my decision a bit more ... but then again, maybe you won't. Thanks, Johnny Hughes -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 252 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.linbit.com/pipermail/drbd-user/attachments/20080523/c2f2730f/attachment.pgp>