Which version would you recommend?

[stefan1975]

Originally Posted by SlowJet

As far as the kernel goes, I think you are on the wrong thread?
SJ

wrong thread? no way! i was just pointing out that i really like the fact CentOS does not get in-life kernel upgrades (apart from security fixes) which makes it really predictable. The fact that fedora gives me new kernels on my desktop is brilliant but i hate crossing my fingers that a new kernel will work on our servers whenever a new one hits the streets.

stefan

[Burner32]

Originally Posted by stefan1975

wrong thread? no way! i was just pointing out that i really like the fact CentOS does not get in-life kernel upgrades (apart from security fixes) which makes it really predictable. The fact that fedora gives me new kernels on my desktop is brilliant but i hate crossing my fingers that a new kernel will work on our servers whenever a new one hits the streets.

stefan

really true. Two latest kernels don't even boot on my fedora server.

[SlowJet]

Fedora 10 Host running Virtual-Box 2.0.6
$ uname -a
Linux Ruthie-07.WinProxy 2.6.27.7-134.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Mon Dec 1 22:42:50 EST 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

top - 14:47:49 up 14:04, 3 users, load average: 0.19, 0.19, 0.25
Tasks: 154 total, 1 running, 152 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.3%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 3097448k total, 3010496k used, 86952k free, 102528k buffers
Swap: 8388592k total, 76k used, 8388516k free, 1447772k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3187 darwinhw 20 0 1154m 1.1g 16m S 23.9 36.2 383:54.68 VirtualBox

]$ uptime
14:48:06 up 14:05, 3 users, load average: 0.14, 0.18, 0.25



Fedora 10 guest running Apache with php

top - 14:28:07 up 8:42, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.17, 0.43
Tasks: 142 total, 1 running, 140 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 96.7%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1033820k total, 824964k used, 208856k free, 123684k buffers
Swap: 2097144k total, 0k used, 2097144k free, 409336k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
...
5489 root 20 0 28072 10m 6776 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.91 httpd
5491 apache 20 0 28204 5924 1652 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5492 apache 20 0 28204 5920 1652 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5493 apache 20 0 28204 5920 1652 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5494 apache 20 0 28204 5892 1632 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5495 apache 20 0 28204 5876 1612 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5496 apache 20 0 28204 7192 2864 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.08 httpd
5497 apache 20 0 28204 6280 2000 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5498 apache 20 0 28204 6280 2000 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.01 httpd
5532 darwinhw 20 0 4808 1252 1080 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.08 run-mozilla.sh
5549 darwinhw 20 0 185m 58m 22m S 0.0 5.8 1:32.23 firefox


SJ

[stevea]

Point to Stefan.

Fedora and the latest kernel are NOT appropriate for production use. If SJ doesn't understand why, then he needs to admin 100 broken problematic Fedora boxen for a year.

Fedora is fine for casual use - and to get a peek at upcoming changes to the kernel and packages. Anyone suggesting Fedora for a production install or even for Linux Noobs needs his head examined.

Fedora is broken-by-design - every release contains many broken parts. More parts break during update. Does SJ seriously think the broken DNS client in F10 is acceptable for production ? Does SJ understand that patching this on a load of servers (still broken several months after the initial report) isn't acceptable for production ?

No one but an amateur thinks Fedora is appropriate for a production server. It doesn't matter a bit that RHEL5 or Centos5 uses twice the compute time - that it only uses 1% the admin time is the issue.

[scottro]

Fedora, broken by design. If they ever have a slogan contest, I might steal that one.
Anyway, I'm sure if we thought about it, we could probably think of a situation where you might have Fedora in production, but under what I think most people would consider normal circumstances, it's not designed for that. As the OP wants to learn, it would certainly be challenging, but a distribution where you kind of hold your breath with each update isn't really a sysadmin's ideal.

While I see SJ's point about processing time, I think that, even in a production environment with one or two servers, where there was no money for hardware, that employee time is always the biggest expense.
Also, and I think this one is obvious, in the type of environment to which stevea is discussing, with large numbers of servers, no, you certainly don't want Fedora.

Despite SJ's experience with resource use, in another of my purely subjective observations, on a little Acer Aspire One laptop, CentOS ran better than Fedora did, being much faster. It wasn't doing any production type things though.

Anyway, I think the OP's probably had his question answered.

If y'all want to fight about it, that's fine, but perhaps it should go to PM before it gets nasty.

[SlowJet]

I run updates on a test machine first.
I see no difference between a kernel name 2.6.18 that had hundreds of patches and fixes applied and Fedora fixes applied in a new kernel number.

Fedora has never MADE me update and has NEVER installed a package (except for deps or a deps mishap like in preupgrade.)

The change logs tell me what is new and changed in an update so I don't bother if I think it would be something bad for my. My test machine tell me if there are any problems.

All I'm saying is that Fedora 10 is different and it would work very well for a low volume server.
And the errors you guys mention seem to be self inflicted due to poor testing and tracking the actual changes.

The only time I have had Fedora crash was rawhide, the installer, or when I screwed up royally.

Most of You guys are brainwashed parrots with out the actual facts or knowledge of Fedora, Linux or computers, period..And you spreads crap to newbies by the bucket.

SJ

[scottro]

Whatever. Thread closed, I'm not in the mood for this tonight. Do you folks have to call names?

Sheesh, it's like a being a kindergarten teacher, and I'm really not in the mood.

Go pet kittens, or puppies or play with a kid or something.