[Info-vax] Somewhat levels up to not port outside VMS (letter from Wyoming)

[Scott Dorsey]

Neil Rieck  <n.rieck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
>Now I need to point out that MBA-types may be prolonging the inevitable in =
>deferring to someone coming in behind them. In the case of VMS or OpenVMS, =
>many hope that the system can be ported later (harder after you loose talen=
>t) or the company can eventually migrate to some sort of cheaper wiz-bang L=
>inux solution. I can tell you that going the Linux way can open up a whole =
>new problem as I have documented here:
>http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_linux.html#realworldlinuxproblems

There are a lot of people in management who only expect to be at the company
for a couple years, and who consequently believe that if a problem can be
kicked down the road a couple years to make it someone else's problem that
they don't have to deal with it.

In the end these people destroy companies, but there are plenty of them out
there.

>The biggest problem with Linux is that you can inadvertently change the sys=
>tem during an upgrade, which will break something else. Then it is impossib=
>le (or virtually so) to roll back.

ALWAYS take a snapshot before doing any upgrades.  We install patches on linux
systems once a year, or when there are actual security issues, and we try to
avoid distributions like Ubuntu that are constantly in flux.  Come patch time,
I'll dd off a copy of the OS while it's running if I am unable to shut it down
and pop off an image with clonezilla, then do updates, then look carefully to
see what craziness the updates have broken this time.

>I have first-hand knowledge of how this Linux problem is handled in "custom=
>er owned / IBM-managed" data centers (my employer has several). IBM will no=
>t give ROOT or SUDO privs to anyone without first submitting a written requ=
>est then you need to wait 4-8 weeks for the response depending upon the urg=
>ency.
>http://neilrieck.net/docs/openvms_notes_linux.html#ibm_managed

This is fair enough.  If you want root... then what the hell are you paying
IBM to do?
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."