Fedora = "the darker side of the Internet?"

[Bill Oliver]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:

>
>
> Am 11.10.2013 17:45, schrieb Bill Oliver:
>> They offer CentOS and Fedora on their virtual machines.  I use Fedora on my home machine, but switched to CentOS on
>> the virtual machine because it's a hassle to frequently upgrade, and going from fedora 16 to 18 was impossible
>> without reprovisioning the machine.
>
> because you can't skip a version
>
> i maintain around 20 production servers over years running with
> fedora and *all of them* where upgraded from F9 to F18 with
> yum as well the upgrade to F19 is tested and easy
>
> you only need to follow the instructions and in case of GRUB2
> it is also easy and painless to move /boot in case you have a
> own virtual disk for it to get the needed free space
>
> hence you can even do this on one virtual machine and blow
> the dd-image including the partition table to the other
> machines if they are maintained well and have the same software
> based from the same golden master
>
> so no - it is *not* impossible
>

Sigh.  Yes, I know you have to go through 17 to get to 18, Mr. Harald.  And, no, it's not just a matter of "following instructions."  In fact, almost nothing that requires significant technical skill is just a matter of "following instructions."  Arrogant savants forget the fact that they paid a lot of dues learning the little tricks that *aren't* in the instructions.  Your tell, for instance, is that you brag about upgrading 20 machines from F9 to F18.  You may not be willing to admit it, but I suspect *somewhere* in there, there were a few gliches.  But, because you have done it a bunch of times, you know how to deal with them.  That's very different that doing it for the first time.

I see this a lot in my other area of expertise -- forensic pathology.  I train pathologists to do forensic autopsies.  For an uncomplicated forensic autopsy on, say, a drug death, it takes me about an hour and a half, not including staff time in prep and cleanup.  My residents take about four to six hours, and still get it wrong.  It's not because they are stupid, they are not.  It's not because they don't know what they should be doing -- they study hard.  It's not because they are lazy.  It's because no two cases are exactly the same, and because they have to learn how to do things both correctly *and* efficiently.  My first autopsy took me 10 hours.  My 20th took me 4 hours.  My 8000th took me 45 minutes.

It's also true with music.  I have played an instrument for many years.  It's easy for me to "follow instructions," and pick up a new tune.  My wife started playing the piano six months ago.  It turns out that it's not so easy for her to simply "follow instructions" and play.

The same thing is true with system administration.  System administration really isn't just a matter of following instructions, else a monkey could do it quickly and efficiently.  Instead, unless you are simply loading multiple copies of the same machine image, complications come up and there's a little problem solving involved.  I've done a lot of system admin, but I had never upgraded a fedora distribution (having used other distros for the past 15 years).  The first time was not a charm.  Most people *didn't* have flawless upgrades from F16 to F17, particularly the first time they did it, as is demonstrated by a quick internet search on "problem upgrading from F16 to F17" and "problem upgrading from F17 to F18."  '

It seems many people didn't find it as mindless and mechanical a process as you pretend.

And, in fact, there's a point where it simply doesn't matter.  There's a limited amount of time most folk are willing to spend on an upgrade path that is a pain in the ass -- in spite of your assertion.  When you hit the point where you say "screw it, this isn't worth the hassle," the difference between "impossible" and "not impossible but not worth the trouble" is functionally nil.


bill