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

[Neil Rieck]

On Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 10:23:46 AM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> 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."

Good points.

Questions:
1) how do you do your LINUX snapshots?
2) just out of interest, what version of Linux do you run?

Neil Rieck