I'm stumped as to what version of RedHat 7.x to upgrade our old and reliable RedHat 6.2 servers to.

I've been doing Linux development on a Linux distro under contract that has the 2.4.9 kernel, so I'm pretty familiar with it, but have not played around that much with RedHat's 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 distros that have the 2.4 kernel except for some contract work.

I'm thinking right now that the one to upgrade to would be 7.2 because it's the second rev with ext3 and grub, while still at the known stable 2.4.9 kernel?

Will we regret it if we don't select 7.3?

Opinions please.

I'd go 7.3 (I haven't tried it yet, but CPanel supports it and you shouldn't have any problems using anything else). :D

7.3 gets my vote...

use 7.3, but imediately upgrade the kernel to 2.4.18-10 or custom compile 2.4.19. There's an ext3 bug in redhat 7.3 for the default kernel for dual cpu machines. Among other small bugs.

But all in all RH 7.3 is much more up to date than 7.0, 7.1 or 7.2.

Use Redhat 7.3 and upgrade all installed services using redhat network. Then download the latest stable kernel and install that.

Remember to install the kernel using rpm -ivh not rpm -Uhv.

Edit the grub.conf in /boot/grub/ to ensure the updated kernel is the default.

As usual, only run what you need and turn off all unrequired services. If you don't know what a service does turn if off or work out if your really need it.

Host based firewalling in conjunction with a site firewall is always a good idea and is fairly easy to manage. Defence is depth is a good policy.

If you have custom build of apache etc don;t upgrade/install them during the upgrade. Recompile them after the system upgrade is complete.

For shared hosting servers I compile all the core services. For other situations I am happy using the rpms.

Good luck. I have an upgrade fomr 6.x to 7.x coming for some older services coming soon. Plan carefully you should be ok. Read all the RH doco related to known upgrade issues.

regards,

Steve Kelly

Hi thepacecar10,

If you dont mind, Cold u please tell me as to what are the servcies that should normally run on a Cpanel/Linux 7.3 server.

If there are not many,


Regards/-

7.3 should be fine, but I don't think you'll regret using 7.2 is you feel more comfortable with that. 7.3 isn't too much different (not the same thing, but) and it's not really anything significant/ Still it's not a bad idea to use, but 7.2 would be fine too. I too would suggest you upgrade from 2.4.9 though and use 2.4.18. 2.4.19 is still a little too new for my tastes, but it seems to work well on all the servers I've upgraded for clients (per their request) and I've not seen one problem with .19 yet.

I'll definitely be sure to bring the machines "up2date".

I'm glad I asked.

Sounds like a resounding "go with 7.3", so far.

Another question. Should I stick with lilo, or use grub? So many new options! :)

Originally posted by bitserve
Another question. Should I stick with lilo, or use grub? So many new options! :)

Grub might be better for home systems with dual booting. However, lilo is great and works well and provides you with all the things you should need, especially if this is a server install.