On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 12:13 PM, M Saunders
which has some useful tips. But it'd be interesting to hear from people running Arch on production servers, how well it works for them and what (if any) problems they've faced.
I've 9 personal servers running Archlinux (previously under debian) and I plan to move about ~250 professional hypervisor under Arch this year. Let me share the following experiences with you. 1) Use the minimum set of packages This will save you from updating useless packages and give you a better view of what your server use. As there is only few packages, don't rush to update them when there is major change on it. 2) Do your sysadmin homework Before updating, check archlinux.org for announcements. During update read pacman output.[1] After updating, look for pacsave/pacorig/pacnew files. Supervise your packages. I use munin with the following plugins[2][3] 3) Use a versioned kernel One of the most wanted expectation on a server is to avoid reboot. Arch official kernel is too often updated for a server _and_ cannot be installed without breaking the running kernel (modules mismatch). To workaround this I build custom kernels, with the version in the name[4] and I use a meta package[5] which push new version automatically and clean the old one. So I can update my server, and at the next reboot the last kernel will be selected. 4) Detect daemon upgrade When you update your system, some libraries or binaries can be updated and your running programs still use the old version. This give the bad feeling that your software are up-to-date. But it's false. Of course you can reboot your server to be sure after each update. It's too long and give the feeling to hunt fly with a tank. I use the following script[6] which list services (systemd speaking) which need to be restarted. # checkservcies -l # list services to restart # checkservices -r # restart it 5) Detect server reboot I track my server reboot with the following software[7]. Btw, this is not a solution for 250 servers. 6) Use your repository to spread your custom packages For personal packages or taken from AUR, using a custom repository[8} will simplify your job. You compile your soft in one place, no need to have gcc or base-devel on your servers. Update is automatically propagate as official repository. You can easily override official package (not recommended). You could use a base meta package[9] to have all the basics software on all your servers. This will prepare you to become an archlinux TU or Dev. 7) Security Debian is not more secure because their softwares are old. It's a lie. Check the number of open flaw in the security bug tracker[10]. If you want to be in a secure environment stay up-to-date, don't use debian stable, use debian sid. So Archlinux is a good alternative. Regards, [1] Please note, that is not a pleasure for a package maintainer to add a message in his package. So read it. [2] https://github.com/seblu/archutils/blob/master/archlinux-pacfiles [3] https://github.com/seblu/archutils/blob/master/archlinux-packages [4] https://github.com/seblu/archpkg/blob/master/linux-seblu/PKGBUILD [5] https://github.com/seblu/archpkg/blob/master/linux-seblu-meta/PKGBUILD [6] https://github.com/seblu/archutils/blob/master/checkservices [7] https://github.com/seblu/mailboot [8] https://seblu.net/a/seblu/x86_64/ [9] https://github.com/seblu/archpkg/blob/master/base-seblu/PKGBUILD [10] https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable -- Sébastien "Seblu" Luttringer https://www.seblu.net GPG: 0x2072D77A