Integrate dormant fedora-legacy in up2date/yum packages before EOL

[Axel Thimm]

Instead of having users manually edit their config files to switch to
fedora legacy updates when the time comes, how about having fedora
legacy activated with an empty set of packages (but valid metadata
nonetheless) from the very start? fedora-legacy could "populate" empty
updates directories for FC1-FCX today and get into up2date's and yum's
config files.

When the distribution reaches EOL and fedora-legacy becomes
authoritative over it, fedora-legacy will only need to put the new
errata packages into the prepared folders and not have to propaganda
the correct usage of yum config lines etc.

If that sounds like a good idea, I suggest to add this to FC3 and also
have update packages for FC1/FC2 before they reach their EOL (in
FC1/FC2 updates, not fedora-legacy's, otherwise this defeats the
purpose of a smooth transition).

There is an immediate drawback for the legacy server of course, every
yum update of every fedora box worldwide will ask for one header.info
file for each operation. While the bandwidth will be low, the number
of accesses per time unit will be quite immense.

Also there might be an educational interest, that users should be
forced to do the switch manually to be aware of changed situation. In
this case at least have the config lines commented in the
resp. configuration files with a comment like:

# Fedora Legacy updates
# When a Fedora distribution reaches its EOL it is taken over by the
# Fedora Legacy project, see http://fedoralegacy.org/some/url/here/
# Uncomment the following to get access to errata packages crafted by
# the Fedora Legacy project.
#[fedoralegacyupdates]
#name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates by FedoraLegacy
#baseurl=http://download.fedoralegacy.org/fedora/$releasever/updates/$basearch
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net

[Jesse Krijthe]

On Sat, 2004-08-07 at 05:32, Axel Thimm wrote:
>  Instead of having users manually edit their config files to switch
> to
>  fedora legacy updates when the time comes, how about having fedora
>  legacy activated with an empty set of packages (but valid metadata
>  nonetheless) from the very start? fedora-legacy could "populate" empty
>  updates directories for FC1-FCX today and get into up2date's and yum's
>  config files.
>  
>  When the distribution reaches EOL and fedora-legacy becomes
>  authoritative over it, fedora-legacy will only need to put the new
>  errata packages into the prepared folders and not have to propaganda
>  the correct usage of yum config lines etc.
>  
>  If that sounds like a good idea, I suggest to add this to FC3 and also
>  have update packages for FC1/FC2 before they reach their EOL (in
>  FC1/FC2 updates, not fedora-legacy's, otherwise this defeats the
>  purpose of a smooth transition).
>  
>  There is an immediate drawback for the legacy server of course, every
>  yum update of every fedora box worldwide will ask for one header.info
>  file for each operation. While the bandwidth will be low, the number
>  of accesses per time unit will be quite immense.
>  
>  Also there might be an educational interest, that users should be
>  forced to do the switch manually to be aware of changed situation. In
>  this case at least have the config lines commented in the
>  resp. configuration files with a comment like:
>  
>  # Fedora Legacy updates
>  # When a Fedora distribution reaches its EOL it is taken over by the
>  # Fedora Legacy project, see http://fedoralegacy.org/some/url/here/
>  # Uncomment the following to get access to errata packages crafted by
>  # the Fedora Legacy project.
>  #[fedoralegacyupdates]
>  #name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates by FedoraLegacy
>  #baseurl=http://download.fedoralegacy.org/fedora/$releasever/updates/$basearch 
How about doing an update of these configs say 2 months before a release
turns EOL. That way you will have a smooth transition and still not have
so many requests as when you put it in the config files from the start.
Oh and by the way, I love the idea :)

Jesse

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Aug  7, 2004, Jesse Krijthe <j.krijthe(a)tiscali.nl&gt; wrote:

>  How about doing an update of these configs say 2 months before a
> release
>  turns EOL. 
Why not do so as the last update issued for an FC release?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva(a){redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva(a){lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

[Axel Thimm]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 03:00:12AM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>  On Aug  7, 2004, Jesse Krijthe <j.krijthe(a)tiscali.nl&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > How about doing an update of these configs say 2 months before a release
>  > turns EOL.
>  
>  Why not do so as the last update issued for an FC release? 
That would be already a nice option, but considering that probably all
FC users are modding their yum.conf an update will drop the new
yum.conf onto an yum.conf.rpmnew file which may go unnoticed (unlike
rpm/apt most Fedora update tools don't mention this upon upgrades).

Having the dormant fedora legacy entry from the very beginning
uncommented would be the smoothest and safest transition mechanism,
but it will generate unneccessary hits & load on the fedora legacy
server. OTOH it is only one hit (an empty header.info) per yum
invocation, so it is probably still managable.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net