On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Connie Sieh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Sep 2011, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Tanmoy Chatterjee <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrot=
>> e:
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Tanmoy Chatterjee <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wr=
>>
>> ote:
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 1:48 PM, jdow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>>> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 This method here is different! Now if I enable SL6.1
>>>> repositories only - then when the SL6.2 repo gets available - will it
>>>> be available through the gui "SL addons > yum.. > " or the method is
>>>> different ?
>>>
>>> THANKS FOR ALL THE RESPONSES.
>>> But as a novice I would again request to shed some light on this part
>>> of my queries.
>>
>> You have to pick. If you follow the upstream vendor's model, you use
>> the "6.x" repository, and the updates to 6.2 will be automatically
>> available. Whether you *install* them is your choice, but they'll be
>> available. I recommend doing so.
>>
>> If you use the "6.1" repository, you'll get some updates for a while,
>
> You will get security updates for the full period that security updates are
> available for the 6 release.
>
>> but it will be unsupported in the relatively new feature. It is *not
>
> It is not unsupported.  You will get security updates but will not get the
> new features for each of the new point releases.

I'm staring at what happened under RHEL 5.x with autofs updates, bind
versus bind97, openldap versus openldap24, subversion updates, and
samba3x updates with significant feature additions. The "security
updates" are not enough to try and keep current with significant
feature changes. And as long as the changes are locked off in the
minor release change number by a refusal to expose the system to the
"5.0 through 5.5 reales", rather than updating to 5.6, they'll be
unavailable. This happens _every time_ there's a new point release,
and I'm convinced from painful experience that keeping to the "5x"
repositories rather than the active and current channel for upgrades
introduces genuinely painful system skew.

In my opeinion and experience, it's a support rathole and contributes
to developers and admins having to maintain their own, personal sets
of drivers and binaries and libraries and destablilizing the whole
mess. It certainly occurred with the upgrade from 5.5 and 5.6, I was
able to throw away entire sets of poorly integrated user-built tools
and replace them with supportable and better configured system tools
from the upgrade.