[sclug] Weapon of choice

[Smiles, Mark Mark]

It's an even bigger pain when you scale this to hundreds of systems.
I'm looking into Red Hat's Enterprise management server with satellite &
proxy servers to automate patch delivery. I will also look at Ximian Red
Carpet (Now Novell's). As well as patches, isv software can also be
distributed but these all have to be in rpm format.  I would like to
consider rpm delivery for Solaris patches and ISV software( in rpm
format).
 
Any one have any experience with Solaris software and patches in rpm
format?

Mark Smiles
P.s Uzi 9 mm

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Franklin [mailto:r.c.franklin at reading.ac.uk] 
Sent: 26 November 2003 21:46
To: sclug at sclug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [sclug] Weapon of choice

On Wed, 26 Nov 2003, Roland Turner wrote:

> What was your [Debian] pain?

The package management was a pain in the backside - not the maintenance
once the system was installed (I tend to do little with that) but just
getting the thing installed in the first place - you'd pick something
and
it wouldn't resolve the dependancies for you; just adding one package
would be a merry-go-round of chasing dependancies and fixing clashes
before things would install.

Also, I believe it used SysV init in the days when few other people were
(I was using Slackware at that time) so that was also painful at the
time.
I was less experienced in other UNIXes back then (1996) so I wasn't
prepared for the differences.


If it just goes on and runs solidly, it could be fine for me; I don't
want something which treats me like a moron but I don't want something
that works and doesn't require lots of jiggery pokery to get running.
It's difficult striking a balance between flexibility and control and
ease-of-use.

What do they do regarding patches and updates?  If I put the current
Debian on, how long can I expect security updates to be available which
I
can just drop on and won't interfere with what's already there?


I don't mind trying anything out - I give everything a few days to
impress
me on my desktop machine.  Upgrading my server will be a meaty operation
and I want to make the right choice.

  - Bob


-- 
 Bob Franklin <r.c.franklin at reading.ac.uk>          +44 (0)118 378 7147
 Systems and Communications, IT Services, The University of Reading, UK
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