On Mon, 14 Aug 2017 15:04:19 +0200
Nicolas George <geo...@nsup.org> wrote:
> Le septidi 27 thermidor, an CCXXV, Joe a écrit :
> > Stretch? Systemd was default init for Jessie, the previous stable.
> > Worse, an upgrade of Wheezy to Jessie would actually change the init
> > system used, thus breaking almost every Debian server in the
> > world.
>
> I must be lucky, none of the servers that I handle broke because of
> that.
I upgraded a Sid to use systemd, and I've tried upgrading a backup of
my Wheezy server. Both broke quite badly, neither was bootable, though
both were repairable. I gave up with the unstable, it wasn't worth
chasing down all the minor problems, so I reinstalled with systemd added
at an early stage. An unstable installation is, by definition,
expendable.
I believe I have the server backup OK on Squeeze now, but I'm working
up the courage to do the real thing. There was nothing fundamentally
wrong, but a separate /usr really is a show-stopper with systemd, and
it's nice to have a working firewall...
>
> > The problem, as Erik says, is that the interface to large chunks of
> > *nix is continuously changing, and surprise, surprise, instructions
> > for fixing problems are almost all out of date and useless.
>
> Well, writing documentation is not fun. It is necessary, but almost
> always neglected. I do not think it is significantly better on the
> proprietary side of the barrier, but not with the same kind of flaws
> ("to print the document, use the 'print' menu").
>
Yes, I know... but a bit more backward compatibility would help a lot.
Sound seems to have settled somewhat now, but there were at least ten
years of regular breakage, with nearly all of the information out there
being non-applicable. The official documentation almost never helps
when something breaks (with a few notable exceptions, which I cannot
currently bring to mind), we're reliant on other people who have fixed
the same problem. It's this unofficial documentation which never gets
updated or retired, being mostly frozen in closed forum topics, much of
them not even carrying a date.
--
Joe
