[Info-vax] Beyond Open Source

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-05-10 17:28:50 +0000, johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk said:

> Knowing I was out of my depth at that stage, I got the CSC folks 
> involved and from the residual information available they identified a 
> specific patch that should have been applied but hadn't. Job done. Not 
> just "it's Tuesday again, try these patches".
> ...
> Some people might also say that the market has changed since then.
> ...
> Or maybe I just don't get out enough.
> 
> "One size doesn't fit all."
> 
> ;)

An effort which should now be replaced by tools that identify and 
download and cryptographically verify and stage the relevant patches, 
and that then encourage the system administrator to press the "load and 
reboot" button.

Stepping beyond the basic patch-related housekeeping, there are easier 
and more automated approaches to deal with these problems — and given 
anybody that's been paying any attention will know that many end-users 
(including me!) will all too often just delete the logs or ignore the 
stackdumps or the other errors — and that we should then design the 
environment to upload and scan the crashes autonomously, and that we 
can and should lead the end-users toward the proper outcome for the 
issues they're encountering.   It's increasingly common for 
applications to avoid user-visible crash logs, but to collect and 
encrypt and upload that data for analysis.

-- 
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