Ok guys, 

Shake hands. If you continue this discussion we will have a nasty not so 
symbolic link between you two.

Kind regards, 

The out-side

Op 17 okt. 2012 om 20:33 heeft Reginald Beardsley <[email protected]> het 
volgende geschreven:

> 
> 
> --- On Wed, 10/17/12, Udo Grabowski (IMK) <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> When you have a big bunch of users and tell them "Hey,
>> tomorrow
>> we upgrade, and then you can't work for a while because
>> your
>> scripts and programs will surely break (esp. those of
>> people
>> no longer in the institute), so you have to interrupt and
>> fix your stuff NOW !", you will surely find a job
>> opportunity
>> the next week for a new system administrator on your
>> institutes
>> webpage....
>> What you are proposing is maybe ok for small systems with
>> one
>> administrator and a few users max., but not for large
>> deployments.
>> A typical upgrade in our server farm lasts about 3 month or
>> more,
>> and such unnecessary additional distractions will make such
>> an
>> upgrade even more unpleasant, as program compatibility is
>> prime
>> in science to have reproducable results (and nobody working
>> here
>> does have time for such additional hassles totally unrelated
>> to
>> what they are paid for), and interruptions in the
>> production
>> chain are not tolerated at all. We put a lot hard work into
>> the
>> new system before upgrading to make it 100% compatible.
>> The adaption of programs to new environments always happens
>> gradually and evolutionary after the upgrade, with some
>> mild
>> pressure from the administrator, but not in one go by
>> slapping
>> into everyones face crying "Wake up, upgrade time !"....
> 
> I'm a geoscientist and have spent most of my career working for "big oil" as 
> in majors and super majors.  Those certainly qualify as "large sites" and are 
> a lot bigger than any academic institute I know of. So I'm acutely aware of 
> the issues and what things work and what things don't.
> 
> A site administrator's job is to protect the user community from disruptive 
> changes.  However, that does not entitle any site administrator to push 
> bandaids onto the larger user community.  It is the profligate use of 
> bandaids to which I'm objecting.
> 
> I have seen namespace pollution by symlinks become toxic.  It's very hard to 
> fix once that happens.
> 
> There are cleaner, simpler ways to address the problem than creating 15000+ 
> symlinks.  However, it does require recognizing that other solutions exist.
> 
> Reg
> 
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