On 2014-03-18 16:48, Ken Teh wrote:
> I've had 2 successful upgrades from 6.4 to 6.5 with the sl6x.repo enabled.  In the past, I've never done upgrades, preferring to re-install.
> 
> I'd like to know what folks are doing with respect to enabling the sl6x.repo.  Is it "just enable it!, it's ready from primetime" or are you still disabling it, doing a test drive on a test machine before reenabling across all machines?
> 
> thanks
> 

In the past a new minor version was released and after some days the first updates where shipped that where already delivered to the former minor release.
SL 6.5 had a good timing and shipped the new release together with (nearly) all updates (big Tanks to the SL Crew :)

Personally I don't like rolling releases (6x) and want to define the time when systems are updated to the next minor release.

I have some unattended templates and know what is installed on the systems, so it is easy to do some tests before updating to the next minor release, which was mostly painless
from 5.3...5.n and 6.0...6.n *without* fresh install.

However before rolling out a new minor release I will do some upgrade tests
e.g setup a system with templateX on SL6.4 and SL6.5 take a list of installed packages, default setting, configs ... upgrade from 6.4 to 6.5 collect the data again, compare + application testing ...

Also (unsupported) upgrades from 5.x -> 6.x where already done this way in the past.
Release / Errata notes, testing and VM snapshots are always your friend before (automatically) upgrading your systems ;)

PS:
Update in batches.  Fixing a hand full of systems after some days will cost you hopefully only a short time and give some stress, but fixing hundreds because testing on one system went successfully can cost all big headache.

-- 
Regards,
olli