Sam Clemens wrote:

Linda Walsh wrote:

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Sam Clemens wrote:

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In your original post, you, perhaps inadvertently, implied that the machine couldn't be taken offline to do a fresh install.

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Well --... it "can't" because it would cause me too much grief. I *would* like to get to having a redundant, failover system, but it hasn't been a priority.

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Wholesale replacement of basic system libraries will end in utter chaos, as the install system nees the new libraries, and the older software needs the old libraries.

---- This is not a black & white issue. It's not "work this way or not work at all".

Linda, do yourself a favor, and STOP BEATING YOUR HEAD AGAINST THIS BRICK WALL because it's *not* going to crumble.

You cannot replace selected parts of an engine while the entire engine is running. This goes for tightly bound computer systems (in this case, ANYTHING which uses glibc) as much as physical objects.

I have to say that this is a statement that does not match my experience. Of course it's possible to upgrade remotely glibc and kernels, one just has to be a bit careful. glibc is no problem at all -- either the update is compatible, so new process will pick it up or it isn't, then one has to install a compat package first. (Of course, one better tests that locally first -- that's what VMs are for.) I do this all the time, with Linux systems that are hosted somewhere in a colo, some of them a *continent* away where the costs of going there would be outrageous compared to their commercial value. Maybe you want to note: What Linda wants is the usual way of upgrade for any Debian server -- and it worked all the time, from hamm to etch, basically with an "apt-get dist-upgrade" for my Debian servers without any glitch. So please note that remote online upgrading (this includes remotely triggered boots, of course) *is* possible, many Debian installations are proof to that. And one can do it on SUSE by hand, though it's a painful experience owing to all the manual checks one needs to do. I know because I also did it a few times for colo'd systems and for specially crafted installations on notebooks. It is just not as easy be done with SUSE as with Debian. SUSE has other advantages, that's why I use it on the desktop. But my colo'd servers have all been migrated to Debian to solve more easily exactly the problem that Linda has. And it works like charm. Joachim -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Joachim Schrod Email: jschrod@acm.org Roedermark, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org