Hi All,
With the upcoming Katello 1.3 release we are only support RHEL 6 & Fedora 18, which means this is the first katello release that does not continue support across a single Fedora version (Previously fedora 16). Katello 1.2 was released with upgrade instructions, but they did not cover upgrading from Fedora 16 to Fedora 17 (so i am going to assume it was not supported or tested). So keep in mind today that we really do not have an official policy on upgrading across fedora versions.
Due to the volatile nature of Fedora upgrades (especially going from fedora 16 to fedora 18 which uses two different upgrade mechanisms), I am proposing to only support upgrades to from Katello 1.2 to 1.3 on RHEL 6.
What are people's thoughts on that?
Katello 1.3 is somewhat special in that katello 1.2 and 1.3 do not share a fedora version in common, but going forward what are thoughts around either:
a) Not supporting upgrades on fedora at all, only supported on RHEL 6 and CentOS 6. b) Not supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora (i.e. Katello 1.X to 1.Y is supported on Fedora N, but not from N to N+1) c) Only supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora via backup/import of data and certs.
Keep in mind that no matter what we choose, we can always re-evaluate our policy due to user requests. To me testing two additional upgrade scenarios is not worth the time unless people actually use these upgrade paths.
My Vote is for a) (and here's why). If a user is using katello and wanting to upgrade from one version to another across many months, they are likely to want long term stability. Upgrading your operating system to new major versions ever 6-12 months does not give you long term stability. Most users that are interested in running a katello server in production will not use Fedora simply due to the quick release cycle, they will instead use RHEL or CentOS. which is where I think we need to target our resources. So my vote would be to:
- Only support upgrades on RHEL and CentOS - Support CentOS with each release and make sure it works (There are reports that it does not work currently) - Harden our backup/restore guide and utilities
Thoughts?
-Justin
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 06:33:48PM -0400, Justin Sherrill wrote:
Due to the volatile nature of Fedora upgrades (especially going from fedora 16 to fedora 18 which uses two different upgrade mechanisms), I am proposing to only support upgrades to from Katello 1.2 to 1.3 on RHEL 6.
What are people's thoughts on that?
When you say support, what do you mean in particular?
Because our upgrade scripts are somehow generic, they should work on both.
I'd rather prefer to say "we will not test this on Fedoras", but still we should be able to help users running Katello on Fedoras, because not all community users do want to run Katello for "production" setups as you describe bellow. There are some users who want to hack it maybe.
a) Not supporting upgrades on fedora at all, only supported on RHEL 6 and CentOS 6. b) Not supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora (i.e. Katello 1.X to 1.Y is supported on Fedora N, but not from N to N+1) c) Only supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora via backup/import of data and certs.
Well I see one benefit in testing upgrades on Fedoras - we can discover future problems. I can imagine if RHEL7 will use systemd we can expect some headaches in this area and testing upgrades on Fedoras could help us to fix them earlier. Fedoras have new technologies we can expect in upcoming RHEL releases.
Thoughts?
What is your motivation to push on dropping upgrade support for Fedoras? Do we have any issues with it?
I think we already do have beaker tests for upgrades, it is not any extra work to run them on Fedoras as well as on RHEL6. We can even run them on a daily basis (upgrade latest stable to nightly on all platforms).
I would rather keep testing upgrades on Fedoras and recommending users to use RHEL6 or clones if they want to run in production mode with ability to upgrade. But I would not say that "we will not support Fedoras" - I think if someone asks on the chanell, we will do our best to help her or him anyway. I think we are good in this and we need to keep the pace.
On 03/18/2013 06:17 AM, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 06:33:48PM -0400, Justin Sherrill wrote:
Due to the volatile nature of Fedora upgrades (especially going from fedora 16 to fedora 18 which uses two different upgrade mechanisms), I am proposing to only support upgrades to from Katello 1.2 to 1.3 on RHEL 6.
What are people's thoughts on that?
When you say support, what do you mean in particular?
Test, help users with, and fix bugs with.
Because our upgrade scripts are somehow generic, they should work on both.
I'd rather prefer to say "we will not test this on Fedoras", but still we should be able to help users running Katello on Fedoras, because not all community users do want to run Katello for "production" setups as you describe bellow. There are some users who want to hack it maybe.
Do they plan to upgrade across fedora versions? Get stuck on older katello versions? Agreed, the users can try it for themselves and we can say it might work, just that we do not support/test it.
a) Not supporting upgrades on fedora at all, only supported on RHEL 6 and CentOS 6. b) Not supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora (i.e. Katello 1.X to 1.Y is supported on Fedora N, but not from N to N+1) c) Only supporting upgrades from/to different versions of fedora via backup/import of data and certs.
Well I see one benefit in testing upgrades on Fedoras - we can discover future problems. I can imagine if RHEL7 will use systemd we can expect some headaches in this area and testing upgrades on Fedoras could help us to fix them earlier. Fedoras have new technologies we can expect in upcoming RHEL releases.
Across the same version of fedora or across different versions of fedora? I don't think supporting across different versions will teach us much, across the same version, possibly.
Thoughts?
What is your motivation to push on dropping upgrade support for Fedoras? Do we have any issues with it?
The main concern (as release nanny of Katello 1.3), was we have not in the past supported (tested, documented) upgrades across fedora releases. For 1.3, however if this is the case there would not be any supported upgrade path on fedora. I was trying to determine if that is acceptable, and to nail down a policy going forward.
I think we already do have beaker tests for upgrades, it is not any extra work to run them on Fedoras as well as on RHEL6. We can even run them on a daily basis (upgrade latest stable to nightly on all platforms).
Not across fedora versions I'm guessing. Is this also testing that everything is actually functional after the upgrade? (i.e. system registration, rpm downloading all works?)
I would rather keep testing upgrades on Fedoras and recommending users to use RHEL6 or clones if they want to run in production mode with ability to upgrade. But I would not say that "we will not support Fedoras" - I think if someone asks on the chanell, we will do our best to help her or him anyway. I think we are good in this and we need to keep the pace.
If we're putting the work into testing upgrades on Fedora, why recommend they use something else?
-Justin
katello@lists.fedorahosted.org