I feel obligated to vent about the ongoing mess-up of the nfs-utils package.

In the nutshell, all of my SL6.1 machines are affected (not "both machines",
both dozens of machines, 24 is the last count).

The "/" directory is filling up with 1 Mbyte core files from umount.nfs
at the rate of about 3 core dumps per minute. Some of the machines
have small "/" partition (8GB flash), so compute yourself how long they will
last before they fill to 100% and crash. Then I have to go to several
different buildings to revive them manually. By luck I do not have any
affected SL6.1 machines in remote hard to access locations.

And this now happens twice.

The first bum nfs-utils package was issued around December 6th. Then a fixed
package was issued around December 14th with exactly the same name
to better defeat the nightly yum updates. So every SL6.1 machine
has to be repaired manually (yum reinstall nfs-utils).

Problem fixed, but only for a few weeks.

The second bum nfs-utils package was issued around January 6th, this time
with a different name, ensuring that every SL6.1 machine becomes broken.

When I try to understand what happened, I see no mention of this on
the sl-users list (on which I subscribe), no mention of this in sl-announce
and no mention of this on the sl-errata mailing lists. (sl-errata is where
one would expect to see an announcement of released and retracted packages).

Finally, on the sl-developers list I see the discussion and the notices
about reissue and traction.

Now off to "yum downgrade nfs-utils" on every SL6.1 machine.

Recommendations:
- do not build and issue packages on the 6th of the month
- in the *next* release of the nfs-utils package, please include a cron job
  to delete core dumps from "/", just in case.
- remember to post a notice to sl-errata when you push something into
  every SL machine out there.

What a way to run a ship.


-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada