[rt-users] New user considering to use RT + FreeBSD port for 3.8

[Rainer Duffner]

Am 07.11.2008 um 17:28 schrieb Angelo Turetta:

> Joe Mailinglists wrote:
>> Hi Angelo,
>>
>> My name is Krishna...I am subscribed to too many mailing lists,  
>> hence a
>> separate email address for every mailing list.
>
> Thanks, that's a good habit (look at my address), but I nonetheless  
> like
> to know who I'm talking to. The name need not be fake, even if the
> address is.
>
>> Our primary concern here is the upgrade procedure and of course
>> stability.  Will everything magically work from one port
>> to the other?
>
> Every upgrade is a sensible operation, no matter how you installed the
> software. The biggest challenges are upgrades involving DB schema
> changes,  RT is a shining example of how to do it right, but you  
> cannot
> expect to do such a thing 'magically': based on your business  
> continuity
> policies, you may even need a test installation to validate the  
> upgrade
> before deploying it on a production system.


I _really_ recommend everybody run the upgrade on his RT on a test- 
machine first.
There are far too many things that can go wrong.
I've been running our RT for over three years now - on the same  
hardware (started as 3.4.2 on FreeBSD5.4, then 3.6.3 on FreeBSD6.2 and  
now 3.8.1 on FreeBSD7.0) and I've always tried out the upgrades on a  
VMware copy of the installation first (which is easy for me, because  
the DB is not very big yet)
With FreeBSD, you just need to restore /var/db and /usr/local and /usr/ 
ports to a fresh install of your current installation (I always run  
RELEASE+security-patches only, no STABLE).
Then, start by updating the OS to the latest release, than re-build  
the ports and then update RT.
RT is one of the few pieces of software that I don't install via a  
FreeBSD port - maybe I'm a control-freak, but I really want to make  
sure, that nothing goes wrong ;-)

I use PostgreSQL, because I believe it's the more powerful database  
(and I hate some aspects of MySQL).

FreeBSD is IMO the best OS to run RT on, because the packaging-system  
doesn't fight with 3rd-party PERL-module installations (but I think  
nowadays all the required modules are in FreeBSD's port-framework  
anyway)



Rainer