SUMMARY: replacing packaged products

From: Thomas.Meyer <meyert_at_dla-marbach.de>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 97 08:57:41 +0200

My original question (04.04.97) was:

"Hello managers,

the recent email suggesting an upgrade of from (Stone Age) sendmail 5.6.7 to
sendmail 8.8.5. brings me to the question how such upgrades of certain products
packaged into Digital Unix are affected by future upgrades of the operating
system.

I guess that almost every upgrade is lost when Digital Unix is upgraded,
because you can't hinder Digital Unix to reinstall e.g. sendmail 5.6X.Y, as it
is a part of the Base System Subset.

Of course, the Update Administration Utility points you to where the
Unprotected Customized Files are to be found, but is it a sufficient mechanism
to rely on?

Any comments/suggestions/experiences are welcome!"


Tom Webster <webster_at_ssdpdc.mdc.com> pointed out that DEC still uses IDA
sendmail (in contrast to v8.x.x, which is the BSD version), because "it
supports mail delivery agents that
can communicate with DECNET systems".

He also pointed out that it would be preferable if DEC delivered sendmail as a
separate package, possibly with the option to choose between IDA and BSD
sendmail.

Still, the Update Installer doesn't protect a customized sendmail version, only
its configuration files would be saved as Unprotected Customized Files.

Therefore Anthony Talltree <aad_at_nwnet.net> has set up a rdist scheme to
overcome this problem: "The master tree lives in a /usr/local filesystem on a
central machine, so it's not itself overwritten by an OS reinstall."

"Ansgar Schlueter" <Ansgar.Schlueter_at_iabg.de> suggested that DECUS might help
to make DEC deliver a more recent version of sendmail.


Setting up an rdist scheme seems to be an appropriate solution to protect your
own installations from being overwritten by future OS installs.

As a last caveat, I'd like to mention that one drawback of customized packages
can be that DEC possibly refuses to support them.

Regards,

        Thomas Meyer, EDV-Systemadministrator
          email: Thomas.Meyer_at_dla-marbach.de
          smail: Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
                 Schillerhoehe 8-10
                 D-71672 Marbach
        Telefon: +49-7144-848-141
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Received on Tue Apr 08 1997 - 09:17:52 NZST

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