Updaing FC4

[andrewsmith]

Hi Folks,

I've had a Scalix 10 installation running happily on FC4 for quite some time now; yep it's old, but if it aint broke...

Anyway, support (and hence software updates) stopped long ago for FC4 - if I run a 'yum update' my system is shown as up-to-date. I now need to update a few packages (spamassassin and sshd in particular), so I have a few options as I see it:

1. Follow the upgrade path to FC5 and possibly FC6 in order to receive new updates. How likely is it that this will break my scalix install?

2. Rebuild the packages I need manually from source. I'd like to avoid this, I'm sure I'll run into a dependancy nightmare!

3. Use a different repo. I saw there was a community project (fedoralegacy.org) to provide updates to old fedora versions, but it looks like this has thrown the towel in long ago. Is there an alternative?

I'd be most grateful for any guidance or advice on the best way to proceed.

Thanks,

Andy

[les]

Hi Folks,

I've had a Scalix 10 installation running happily on FC4 for quite some time now; yep it's old, but if it aint broke...

Anyway, support (and hence software updates) stopped long ago for FC4 - if I run a 'yum update' my system is shown as up-to-date. I now need to update a few packages (spamassassin and sshd in particular), so I have a few options as I see it:

1. Follow the upgrade path to FC5 and possibly FC6 in order to receive new updates. How likely is it that this will break my scalix install?

2. Rebuild the packages I need manually from source. I'd like to avoid this, I'm sure I'll run into a dependancy nightmare!

3. Use a different repo. I saw there was a community project (fedoralegacy.org) to provide updates to old fedora versions, but it looks like this has thrown the towel in long ago. Is there an alternative?

I'd be most grateful for any guidance or advice on the best way to proceed.

Thanks,

Andy

FC5 and FC6 are already vintage. FC7 and FC8 are current, FC9 is due next month from memory. FC7 will be dropped at that time.

The fedora release cycle is way to quick for production servers.

Fedora Legacy died a long time ago, largely due to the popularity of CentOS.

CentOS is a RHEL replica, managed by a community and distributed for free. It is entirely identical to Redhat Enterprise Linux except for artwork and a minor packages.

The beauty of CentOS is that its release cycle is the same as RHEL. I.e about 5 years per release (cant remember exactly). therefore its solid, stable and supported for a long time. Upgrading is also fairly straight forward between releases.

http://www.centos.org/

Source package building can lead to dependency hell. Personally i've seen that on some old FC3 and earlier installations where i've tried to install the latest spamassassin, pyzor, razor etc.

I'd recommend a switch to CentOS 5.

You will run into some issues with upgrading from scalix 10 to scalix 11 and crossing OS releases, but nothing insurmountable.

[andrewsmith]

Hi Les,

Thanks for the advice, I'll certainly head down the CentOS route I think!

Cheers,

Andy