rob,
apologies to all for my lengthy OT post. here it goes ;)
* Rob Myroon <rob.myroon tartan.ca> [2006-06-20
01:08]:
> I would like to know which operating systems people use
and how they
> keep their ox components (openldap, postfix, cyrus,
postgresql,
> apache, tomcat etc.) up to date.
this will probably give you as many diferent answers and
there are
people on this list. some prefeer bleeding-edge (like
hendrik said),
others need certain features for their environments (or
mental peace)
only present in newer versions, others couldn't care less
as long as
things run smoothly.
> I am using Redhat. Do most people use Suse? In a
previous post,
> Peter S. pointed out to me that the version of openldap
on my system
> is two years old (2.2.13). I did a little checking and
noticed that
> most of the components are old.
my reason for pointing this out is that many openldap
problems (be it
data integrity or "just" performance) have been
fixed in more recent
releases.
also people on the official openldap list tend to not bother
with
questions regarding versions older than
$current-minus-a-few.
with limited deveopment resources it's reasonable to not
put up with
bugs you fixed 2 years ago. this leads to the impression
that only the
latest (stable) release is worth running, implying every
other release
ever made was utterly crap.
having said that openldap 2.2 has already entered
"historic" status
and openldap 2.4 is around the corner. but as long as you
can get
support from your distro or other support service I
wouldn't bother
too much.
in the end this all depends on the importance and size of
your (in
this case: ldap-)deployment. if it's critical to your
infrastructure
and your data and infrastructure is big (many thousands of
records,
and many hosts, services, people depend on it), many people
roll their
own and try to keep up with new (stable) releases.
or use symas packages, like I said before. symas provides
tested,
packaged recent releases of openldap I would not fear
running in
production any day. the "silver" line is
free/gratis, btw.
> Why pay someone to provide packages if the software in
the packages
> is two years old? Does Suse provide packages that are
more up to
> date?
AFAICT SuSE (at least for the SLES line) seems to value
stability over
new release numbers. also, SuSE usually backports fixes (and
sometimes
features) to their older packages. so you'd need to check
out several
packages and fixes to actually find out, what's in your
package and
what's not. my personal impressen is that people pay for
the mental
peace and reduced work (which often is not even part of
their job
description) of not having to care about these things.
> The company I am working for is opening a second office
so I am
> getting another server. I could put ox on this new
server and am
> wondering if I should go with Redhat, Suse, or
something else and
> just compile everything.
> (Or should I just shut up and stick with my old Redhat
rpms?)
keeping current (and stable) can be a lot of work, even if
you
automate your builds. e.g. a new OpenSSL version is out. are
you
really gonna rebuild everything from OpenSSL to Cyrus SASL
and
OpenLDAP, etc. each time this happens?
redhat is notorios for very old openldap releases, so try
the
symas packages or maybe use whatever hendrik releases.
as far as other daemons are concerned: we've also got the
occasional
historic (1.6) cyrus running somewhere in the basement ;)
new cyrus servers are built and migration is planned but we
haven't
got around to getting spools off this one in quite a
while...
so upgrading for the sake or $verion++ is probably moot.
newer MTAs also tend to support newer and better ways of
integration
with anti-spam (spamassassin, dspam, dcc, greylisting,
whatever) and
anti-virus (clamav should do) measures but most are flexible
enough to
integrate with just about anything.
regarding the web components (apache, tomcat) I would care
even less.
so I woudn't be too concerned, as long as known exploits
(relevant to
your deployment) are fixed, which is exactly what SuSE,
RedHat, et
al. do (or they'd be out of business). and upgrade that
openldap 
regards,
-p.schober
--
peter.schoberunivie.ac.at - vienna university computer
center
Universitaetsstrasse 7, A-1010 Wien, Austria/Europe
Tel. +43-1-4277-14155, Fax. +43-1-4277-9140
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