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Your concerns are not an issue with a distro like Debian where the only upgrades are for backported security fixes (or, when an announced point release comes ar

by agwa 13y ago

Your concerns are not an issue with a distro like Debian where the only upgrades are for backported security fixes (or, when an announced point release comes around, critical bug fixes). I worked for several years at a shop with dozens of Debian servers, and nightly unattended upgrades very rarely caused issues, and never caused anything truly serious.

e12e 13y ago
Debian is very stable. I recommend running "safe-upgrade" nightly -- and keeping an eye out for when you need a "dist-upgrade" (typically new kernel images -- and other stuff that should be tested (eg: test that the server actually boots -- not to mention do a reboot to use the new kernel). I'm not sure how good the Ubuntu LTS relases are, but Debian has always been great at both keeping a stable system up, and keeping the upgrade to new version as painless as possible.
- agwa 13y ago
  In the typical case, you only need dist-upgrade for upgrading to a new Debian release (which is every 2 years or so and is big enough news you'll probably hear about it). When there's a security update for the kernel, a regular upgrade/safe-upgrade[1] is sufficient to get it. Of course you must schedule a reboot yourself. [1] "upgrade" if using apt-get, "safe-upgrade" if using aptitude
  - e12e 13y ago
    Ah -- I usually use "apt-get safe-upgrade" for scheduled upgrades, and aptitude for all manual work. So I had the effect right, but the commands mixed up :-)
nknighthb 13y ago
> Your concerns are not an issue with a distro like Debian Ten years ago, I had a Debian server completely wedge itself on an update. glibc was hosed, practically nothing would run, and I couldn't untangle the mess. Had it been unattended, downtime would have been even longer than the hours it took to rebuild the box from scratch. This was not the first or last time such an event would occur, merely the most severe. Updates break things. Anyone who claims otherwise is either incredibly lucky, or incredibly inexperienced.
- makmanalp 13y ago
  But if you can't flip a switch to deploy an identical server and/or restore from a backup image, aren't you in deep shit anyway? Your failure plan is to rebuild the box from scratch?
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    For a one-off budget server in 2002-2003? Yes, yes it is. For a highly-available mission-critical infrastructure in 2013, the failure plan is also to rebuild from scratch, because "failure" means redundant and backup systems have exploded. This is most likely to occur when you automatically roll out untested changes to your infrastructure. In either case, you won't be sleeping tonight. Or possibly tomorrow night.

by agwa 13y ago

e12e 13y ago

Debian is very stable. I recommend running "safe-upgrade" nightly -- and keeping an eye out for when you need a "dist-upgrade" (typically new kernel images -- and other stuff that should be tested (eg: test that the server actually boots -- not to mention do a reboot to use the new kernel). I'm not sure how good the Ubuntu LTS relases are, but Debian has always been great at both keeping a stable system up, and keeping the upgrade to new version as painless as possible.

agwa 13y ago
In the typical case, you only need dist-upgrade for upgrading to a new Debian release (which is every 2 years or so and is big enough news you'll probably hear about it). When there's a security update for the kernel, a regular upgrade/safe-upgrade[1] is sufficient to get it. Of course you must schedule a reboot yourself. [1] "upgrade" if using apt-get, "safe-upgrade" if using aptitude
- e12e 13y ago
  Ah -- I usually use "apt-get safe-upgrade" for scheduled upgrades, and aptitude for all manual work. So I had the effect right, but the commands mixed up :-)

nknighthb 13y ago

> Your concerns are not an issue with a distro like Debian Ten years ago, I had a Debian server completely wedge itself on an update. glibc was hosed, practically nothing would run, and I couldn't untangle the mess. Had it been unattended, downtime would have been even longer than the hours it took to rebuild the box from scratch. This was not the first or last time such an event would occur, merely the most severe. Updates break things. Anyone who claims otherwise is either incredibly lucky, or incredibly inexperienced.

makmanalp 13y ago
But if you can't flip a switch to deploy an identical server and/or restore from a backup image, aren't you in deep shit anyway? Your failure plan is to rebuild the box from scratch?
- nknighthb 13y ago
  For a one-off budget server in 2002-2003? Yes, yes it is. For a highly-available mission-critical infrastructure in 2013, the failure plan is also to rebuild from scratch, because "failure" means redundant and backup systems have exploded. This is most likely to occur when you automatically roll out untested changes to your infrastructure. In either case, you won't be sleeping tonight. Or possibly tomorrow night.