Best of the Newsgroups: ipu vs. fresh install

If this isn't exactly what you wanted, please try our Search (there's a LOT of techy and non-techy stuff here about Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and just computers in general!):

From: tony@aplawrence.com
Subject: Re: Merge Installation/Configuration Problem on OpenServer 5.0.7
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 12:47:16 +0000 (UTC)
References: <20030809005838.GV24551@sco.com> <20030809145224.03115.00002150@mb-m01.aol.com> <bh3m56$v9j$1@pcls4.std.com> <20030810061951.GX24551@sco.com> 

Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com> wrote:
>tony@aplawrence.com (whose news poster of the week is once again
>omitting his real name) wrote:

>> BTW, Bela, whose opinions I highly respect, has weighed in on my
>> site with a negative "it depends" opinion on this.  I'm sorry, Bela,
>> but you are wrong.  No amount of engineering excellence can compensate 
>> for whatever might ALREADY be wrong with a system, and THAT is the 
>> reason that IPU's often cause annoying little problems - couple 
>> that with the fact that IPU's almost always take longer, and there
>> is really no contest.  Fresh is faster, easier, and has less potential 
>> for problems.  

>I thought I made my opinion clear enough on your survey page.  The
>choices you offered were not rich enough.  Asking for a flat "yes" or
>"no" is too restrictive.

>A successful IPU preserves characteristics of a system that the current
>administrator may have no idea about -- obscure driver settings in

And that's exactly the reason I don't like IPU's: because it WILL
preserve changes and settings that it shouldn't.  

>space.c files, for instance.  That could be very helpful in some cases
>(and yes, it could also be harmful).  A successful IPU is much easier
>than a backup, restore, put everything back together cycle.

How do you know when it is successful?  That's the point I think you 
are missing.  The fallout from settings that shouldn't be may take
days or weeks to become apparent.  Nor do I have any easy way to 
tell WHAT was preserved.

>Of course I am talking about a _successful_ IPU, and yes, there's every
>chance it will fail.  It would be insane to attempt an IPU without a
>good verified backup.  If the IPU fails, you can fall back to the fresh
>install, restore, put everything back together plan.

Again, that's not the type of failure I'm talking about.  Complete
failures are unimportant.  It's the nasty subtleties that are the problem.

>The fresh install route is easy on a system where user modifications
>have been carefully documented and mostly kept in separate directory
>hierarchies.  You may have been managing your systems like that for

That's nice, but it isn't really necessary.  It isn't hard to search out 
modified files and adjust as required.  And that IS the whole point:
you have a fresh install, and everything from the old system available 
to look at.  If you are the normal admin, you adjust the system as 
necessary.  If not, you compare files, and copy and change as indicated.


>10-15 years and naturally assume that your experience is similar to
>others'.  Most systems are not so carefully managed.  Getting all user

You misunderstand my role in the world.  Yes, I have some systems I
have managed since day one.  But much more often my job is to go into
systems I've never seen before in my life.

>mods back into place after a fresh install could be a big effort.  It's

It isn't.  It is far LESS effort than hunting down misbehavior.

Actually, if the IPU produced a list of files it preserved from the old 
system, I could work from that direction.  I'd want a diff listing 
of all system directories so I could see files that would NOT have been 
there with a fresh install, and a diff for any system file that would 
have been put down new but was preserved.  If I had THAT, IPU's 
would be neat.

Note that when you do a fresh install and restore your old system to a sub
directory somewhere, information like that is very easy to generate.  That's
why I do fresh installs: because you can see what was modified on the 
old system and put it back if you want to.

>even worse if a system has been managed by various people over time, the
>current one having no idea what predecessors did.  (Again, that could be
>seen as an argument for the fresh install route -- start from a clean
>slate.  In some cases yes.  In others, no.  Depends what the current
>admin knows about the specific system and about Unix and OpenServer
>system management in general.)

>> Quite possibly THIS problem might have happened even with a fresh 
>> install.  After all, the hardware is ridiculously old.  But the 
>> major concept is that IPU's are just headaches waiting to happen.

>Quite possibly.

>> I'm going to shut up now.  I've shown the horses the water and 
>> that's all I can do.
>> 
>> I hope this particular horse solves his problem and doesn't 
>> find too many more.  These things can be extremely frustrating,
>> and take up too much time.

>I think you're wrong to focus on the IPU vs. fresh install aspect of
>this situation.  He's got a panic, I highly doubt it has anything to do
>with the IPU.  You also take the position that Merge is useless, and
>since Merge is involved, there really isn't anything for you to add.

I don't mean to really: it's a side discussion that grew out of this.
As noted, the Merge issue may have nothing to do with IPU's.  But the
IPU, and the other difficulties he had getting Merge up at all, do 
muddy the waters.

As to silly: Merge is silly for this purpose.  He needs it to make
his AOL connection, a task which a stand alone XP machine could do far
more easily.


--  
tony@aplawrence.com Unix/Linux/Mac OS X  resources: http://aplawrence.com
Get paid for writing about tech: http://aplawrence.com/publish.html

Unix and Linux Support

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.