Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.devel > #116230

Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades

Show all headers | View raw

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] - view raw

On 2025-03-06 08:43 +0000, Holger Levsen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 04, 2025 at 08:39:43PM -0500, Helmut K. C. Tessarek wrote:
> > Both network "outages" could have been prevented by adding a note at the end
> > of the dist-upgrade output.
> 
> they could also have been prevented by reading the release notes and following
> their advice.

Would it? Do we know why these things happened? K.C. does not say what
he was upgrading from/to (so it wasn't a very useful report in that
regard), but there has certainly been a long-term expectation that
headless upgrades will work (and in my experience of 25 years now they
always do (well done everyone - I am regularly impressed at how this
usually doesn't break).

Which entry in which release notes will warn that this time
(presumably - was this an upgrade to unstable K.C. or to bookworm, or
something else?) the (pretty old now) eth0 -> 'annoying, unmemorable,
but ordered and unique', renaming will/might actually break your
config? Or that dhcpd will be replaced by network manager in such a
way that things break?  (Is the mechanism here that the server was
running dhcpd to dish out addresses so now in fact the server is
working but other machines are not getting addresses?

I do read the release notes before the first upgrade to a new release,
but I wouldn't be expecting either of the mentioned things to break so
I'm not (yet) convinced that 'RTFM' is a fair response here. I do
vaguely recall that one version of DHCP (isc-dhcp?) was being retired
(did that happen for bookworm?). But normally debian upgrades do not
replace your existing packages, precisely because they might be doing
something important.

I've just looked over the release notes for upgrading to bookworm and
whilst here is loads of good advice about checking for obsolete
packages, noting removals, making backups etc, it is largely generic
and relies on the user knowing what removed packages do. I didn't see
anything specific which warned about the 2 issues noted, and the guide
is pretty long these days, so some skimming the 3rd time you upgrade
is inevitable. So yeah, would RTFM really have avoided these problems?
Maybe, maybe not.

In general I would echo Helmut's response: it is better to work out
why this happenned and try to prevent it, than to add more notices, as
we do have some notice mechanisms already. But they are old, and
expectations change so it's not crazy to ask if they are still sufficient.

But equally, starting with 'it's your fault' seems unhelpful and
possibly unfair. I look forward to some answers in response to Helmut,
and we'll find out if there are real issues to address or not.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Debian, Wookware
http://wookware.org/

Back to linux.debian.devel | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-05 03:40 +0100
  Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Fabio Fantoni <fantonifabio@tiscali.it> - 2025-03-05 10:30 +0100
  Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-05 16:10 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org> - 2025-03-05 16:20 +0100
      Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> - 2025-03-05 17:50 +0100
        Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de> - 2025-03-05 19:30 +0100
          Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-05 20:40 +0100
            Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Soren Stoutner <soren@debian.org> - 2025-03-05 21:00 +0100
          Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-05 20:40 +0100
          Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> - 2025-03-05 21:10 +0100
            Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-05 21:40 +0100
              Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de> - 2025-03-05 22:30 +0100
                Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-06 09:00 +0100
            Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-05 21:40 +0100
      Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-05 20:40 +0100
        Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-06 10:10 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2025-03-06 15:50 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Richard Lewis <richard.lewis.debian@googlemail.com> - 2025-03-07 01:50 +0100
  Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> - 2025-03-06 06:50 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-07 00:10 +0100
  Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2025-03-06 09:50 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Fabio Fantoni <fantonifabio@tiscali.it> - 2025-03-06 11:30 +0100
    Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2025-03-06 15:20 +0100
      Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2025-03-06 17:40 +0100
      Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades Bjørn Mork <bjorn@mork.no> - 2025-03-06 18:00 +0100
      Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-07 00:00 +0100
        Re: Improvement of headless server upgrades "Helmut K. C. Tessarek" <tessarek@evermeet.cx> - 2025-03-07 00:20 +0100

csiph-web