Arch Linux

hungsonbk

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Registered: 2007-05-26

Posts: 105

Website

Running Arch as an product Server

Hi there. i have been with Arch Linux for a while and i love it very much. I can study, i can control, and more importantly it is stable.

At the moment, I set up my own server with Arch and it works perfectly.

1. My question is that whether we should upgrade Arch frequently (pacman -Suy) or leave it if it is still working properly ? In a enterprise environment, many are using Debian, BSB, Red Hat, etc. so if i have to pursuade my Boss, what is the reason to use Arch instead of Others ?

2. Does Arch Repos safe ? if someone hacks into a Repo and spread worms, every archer that uses pacman to update there system will be affected. So whether i should update my Arch frequently or leave it if it is still working??

Cheers.

Last edited by hungsonbk (2007-05-31 12:08:35)

STiAT

Member

From: Vienna, Austria

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 606

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Currently, there is no enterprise Arch version. The discussion came up once, by some user who wanted to provide "stable" snapshots of arch.

This means, having the current Arch release supported and just patched with security patches. Though, there is no similar project, and at the current state, i would not choose Arch linux for an enterprise server, also for the reason there is no commertial support. Rather, i'd choose RedHat, Debian (with support by another company), Ubuntu or SuSE as a server distribution.

Running arch with pacman -Syu frequently can actually break things. Probably when they restart or when they try to load modules runtime. Look at the latest boost library update, which broke some packages for the reason that the programs were linked against the old library. Also a good example is the db (barkley db) upgrade which happened, where Apache was not updated to work against this version.

// STi

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hungsonbk

Member

Registered: 2007-05-26

Posts: 105

Website

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

:D:DThanks STiAT
I  am very sad when it is like that. but i think you are right. Arch Linux at the moment is still a personal Distro. It can be used to study and tweak but not for enterprise.

Maybe i have so setup a Debian PC to know about it. This that what i realy do not like

d2_racing

Member

From: Québec,Canada

Registered: 2007-05-11

Posts: 27

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Debian is rock solide

Also, Arch is a up to date distribution, so for a server, maybe you will need a Debian Stable install.

Also, if you really want to control your server, maybe you could try Gentoo.

oli

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From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2006-02-07

Posts: 164

Website

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

>Also, Arch is a up to date distribution, so for a server, maybe you will need a Debian Stable install.

As far as I know Judd Vinet is using Arch on production servers. So in the end it depends on an able administrator.

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STiAT

Member

From: Vienna, Austria

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 606

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Of course, if you buy some arch dev in your company, who fixes things as soon as they occur - no problem.

Otherwhise you'll need to wait for the official fix by the developer or do the fix yourself. This depends on a guy having the skills.

We, in our company (iT Sub-company of  a bank) don't run any distribution without commertial support for production servers. We're not even allowed to.

My personal server at home (nfs/samba/webserver/db server/mail server) runs arch. If i could find any serious company providing arch as a virtual server distribution, i'd be customer, but i havn't found any provider in europe yet who provides arch on vhosts.

But that's me, i would never ever want arch to be used as a production server in our company - the risks are too high. RedHat Enterprise and SuSE fit for the tasks very well here. That's no advertise, since you know, i'm arch addicted, but i seriously don't consider it as "stable" or "supported" enough for boxes running applications with a sla, meaning that we guarantee uptime, availability and so on. In example, netbanking or especially for stock trading purposes i would never run arch .. well, i could never run arch either, since the hardware architecture is not supported .

// STi

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Ability is nothing without opportunity.

N1ckR

Member

From: West Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2007-05-25

Posts: 39

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Re: Running Arch as an product Server

I have been pondering over this subject.

Applying patches is one thing, but what if the upstream newer version fixes this, patches are hard to maintain (Like the old  Red hat 2.4 Kernel with loads of 2.6 features backported.... ) vs trying to keep upto date with upstream versions.

IMHO what about be good is the ability to choose versions of software, so if you can pin app 1.5 so you will only get security updates eg 1.5.1 to 1.5.9 (or similar)... could pin as little or as much as you want... obviously I have not considered the logistics of such an idea, but I know that Gentoo and Debian allow you to be selective about versions.

Cheers, Nick

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My website | Money Traffic Blog

Dieter@be

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From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-05

Posts: 2,001

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Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Also, if you really want to control your server, maybe you could try Gentoo.

Now that would be insane!

That distro is just not built for such usage, neither is Arch btw.  And making it enterprise ready would require way to many dev hours, let's just stick with the goals we have (goes for Gentoo too)

Last edited by Dieter@be (2007-06-18 17:38:27)

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kth5

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Registered: 2004-04-29

Posts: 657

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Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Also, if you really want to control your server, maybe you could try Gentoo.

Now that would be insane!

That distro is just not built for such usage, neither is Arch btw.  And making it enterprise ready would require way to many dev hours, let's just stick with the goals we have (goes for Gentoo too)

I wouldn't say that using Gentoo for control is insane, quite on the contrary. Gentoo is very nice if you want to tailor your installation to specific needs. This becomes a huge advantage if you need to set up a cluster of cloned installs. USE flags then come in handy and the time that the build process takes is negligible. That power put into the hands of an incapable admin is very dangerous though. What's more, for a one time setup for a single machine, that in a whole makes no sense at all.

In the latter case I'd go for any distribution that provides me binary packages and simply build my system from the ground up with what's available. Choices like CentOS, RedHat or - heck - even SuSE do make sense if you have a strict policy regarding available long time support for you system. What I mean by that if you have a either lazy admin or someone that doesn't have the skills to even look for bugs outside of the scope of the particular problem to solve.

Arch on the other hand is really nice for those who want and can spend time. Which's company is not as  restrictive as to force the choice onto the admin and rather trusts him/her for as long as it works for them.

To sum up, nobody can tell you which is the right choice for YOU, ME or ANYONE. This universe has uncountable many stars, you can only be on one. You can in theory travel some more though.

Last edited by kth5 (2007-06-18 18:04:14)

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I recognize that while theory and practice are, in theory, the same, they are, in practice, different. -Mark Mitchell

mecon

Member

Registered: 2007-06-25

Posts: 31

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Maybe try  slack. Slack does not have pacman but it is Rock Solid, and heck I would like running arch64 on a server would be nice if you know what your doing. I really like the rolling release system but sometimes that can break things. I'm not a server guy.

Last edited by mecon (2007-06-28 02:34:06)

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Arch Linux the best thing to come out of Canada since Rush

Obi-Lan

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2007-05-23

Posts: 179

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

I think keeping Gentoo server would be a lot of work and skills to solve problems with major version upgrades. Ubuntu has long term support for version 6.06 which seems to be quite nice, it doesn't require much time or work to get lamp server running with ubuntu.

miko

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-04-16

Posts: 49

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Running arch with pacman -Syu frequently can actually break things. Probably when they restart or when they try to load modules runtime. Look at the latest boost library update, which broke some packages for the reason that the programs were linked against the old library. Also a good example is the db (barkley db) upgrade which happened, where Apache was not updated to work against this version.

I would love to see some mechanism for detecting/testing dependency on old libraries for such situations. Maybe something like RecompilationRequired=(package) in PKGBUILD, or post_install_test() function (returning true/false) in install file, some similar solution for pacman. I often do pacman -Syu, but not every time I notice that something broke, especially for not-so-often used programs And every time it happens I am wondering if there could be some infrastructure for regression testing, which I could make after every package upgrade...

miko

squarebug

Member

Registered: 2007-09-05

Posts: 3

Re: Running Arch as an product Server

Running Gentoo on production servers can have its pitfalls, but if you know what you're doing I take it over any other distro (I am running 10 production servers with it). There is Third Party commercial support by hardware vendors, albeit not a lot (you can look at the ads on Gentoos website). The advantages for me are avoiding the dependency hell, being able to build a slim system (same idea as with Arch) with customized packages (in case you do need that LDAP support :-) ), and version control. I can choose to only apply security updates or upgrade all packages to the current status. On the downside is a long initial compile time (once you have the machine ready I recommend taking a snapshot for quick raw iron restore), and the necessity to understand package management (via emerge) in minute detail.

Also, I found their forum and docs to be extensive and the community is very responsive.

Just my 2 cents.. and no, I'm not in any form affiliated with Gentoo :-)

Last edited by squarebug (2007-09-06 01:06:50)