On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Brian K. White <brian@aljex.com> wrote:
But aside from that serial and telephony and power hardware doesn't go obsolete just because it gets old.
I was thinking more in line with what do you do if the hardware fails... which hardware has a nasty habit of doing at the worst possible moment. If the company is no longer around... your options are limited, especially if the hardware was for supporting an obsolete technology. If there are other hardware replacements from other vendors.. then you're not so bad off.
pdu's etc just because some years have passed? The only thing that changed in those years that's creating any problem at all, is software. The kernel changes and some binary drivers can no longer be used, and now systemd breaks the init scripts. It doesn't necessarily break them all, or break them unfixably, but whatever harm it does, it does for no justifiable reason.
But.. that still begs the question... why are you (or anyone else for that matter) installing the latest openSUSE on these systems? Is there a pressing need to upgrade? OK, bug fixes, but... why run the latest and greatest Linux on a system that is 10 or 15 years past its prime, and not in any way shape or form contemporary with the OS release? This same scenario applies to Linux dropping support for i386 CPUs. There are still loads of 386s out there running along doing various dedicated tasks... some still running old MS operating systems, some running on Unix or Linux. They will continue to run along fine on whatevery OS they are running, and the operators will not upgrade to the latest release... no need. Note, I'm not saying that you're dumb for upgrading... just questioning... why push the upgrade out when systemd is still fresh and causing you headaches? Or... why push the upgrade at all?
The scsi cards are a teeny bit more justifiable but not really. If a server cost enough, and isn't broken, and the customers workload hasn't changed, then there is no valid justification for saying they must get a new, probably less reliable and certainly less tested one just because a few, like as few as 3, years have passed. Especially when there is an identical backup server doubling the cost.
So... no justification for new server hardware... doesn't the same consideration apply to a new OS? I mean.. if the server is providing its services OK on the existing OS, why put yourself through the pain of pushing an OS upgrade? This is how I've approached it on any systems I'm maintaining... there is zero need to upgrade internal "green zone" OSes on these dedicated bits of hardware unless there is some major bug that has to be corrected and patches are not backported. On systems that need a much more solid base with little to no changes I would never consider to run a volatile OS like a leading Linux distro... it just makes more work for me and other supporting it. On those systems I would always go with a mature Unix. On systems that are new and have fully supported current hardware.. Linux is def an option. How does this relate to oS Factory... ummm... well.. the question is, does the community put its effort into getting systemd working? or do we maintain dual support... I'd vote always for systemd. It doesn't cover everything... that's well known... but if we run those systems that are critical to have legacy sysinitv on an older relase for now and put all effort into closing the gaps on systemd.. we win in the end don't we? We then have a systemd that fulfills our collective needs. I'll stop waffling on this now. C. -- openSUSE 12.1 x86_64, KDE 4.9.0 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org