Package Management / Updating

[freaky@]

Hey there,

this is probably a huge noob question, but I can't seem to find the answer. Sorry about that.

We use Fedora Core 4 (which I'm new to, usually use gentoo) for the Plesk servers. When installing plesk I saw it grab a lot of packages from the plesk server, including some I thought were already installed, like the mailserver.

Anyways, am I still supposed to use the Fedora tools? Like yum for updating the system and/or fedora's tools to add IP addresses, modify the firewall, etc, etc or should I see plesk as something that takes hold of the distribution in such a way these tools might interfear with it?

Not that I want to change a lot on the servers, but security updates are important and in some distributions I've seen that package layouts (file locations or even the way the config file was built up) have changed with an update. I can imagine that this would cause huge problems with plesk, and this is something I want to avoid at all cost ofcourse.

Also, can anyone advise on how hard it would be to upgrade to Core 5 or higher, as Fedora only has security updates for 6-8 months, 1 1/2 year if you use fedora legacy. Then again, if plesk replaces these packages with their own, they'll also do the security updates I guess.. Otherwise we can better go for Red Hat or something as they provide security updates for a much longer time.

Anyways, please advise.

TIA

 

[breun]

Originally posted by freaky

Anyways, am I still supposed to use the Fedora tools? Like yum for updating the system and/or fedora's tools to add IP addresses, modify the firewall, etc, etc or should I see plesk as something that takes hold of the distribution in such a way these tools might interfear with it?

Plesk does take a firm hold of your server, but you definitely shouldn't stop using yum! You can use Fedora's tools to add IP addresses, but you can also do that through the Plesk web interface. Also, Plesk has a firewall module, but you're free not to use it and setup your firewall however you want it.

Also, can anyone advise on how hard it would be to upgrade to Core 5 or higher, as Fedora only has security updates for 6-8 months, 1 1/2 year if you use fedora legacy.

I upgraded my workstation from FC4 to FC5 using yum. Just grabs FC5's fedora-release package, install it and run yum update after that. I don't know however if this would work smoothly on a Plesk server.

Then again, if plesk replaces these packages with their own, they'll also do the security updates I guess..

They don't do OS security updates. Plesk only installs updated versions of packages it directly uses (courier-imap and the like), but not things like the kernel and OpenSSH. You'll have to take care of that yourself (or hire someone to do it, of course).

Otherwise we can better go for Red Hat or something as they provide security updates for a much longer time.

I use CentOS for servers myself. It's RHEL rebuild. If you don't need the support that you pay for when using RHEL, this is excellent as it's free and works just as well.

 

[freaky@]

Thanks. This clarifies a bunch. Had to downgrade the selinux policy package to get plesk installed. Probably only cuz they just updated it.

Saw the dutch forum, is it yours? You got quite some posts on it.

 

[breun]

Yes, I had the same problem when installing Plesk on CentOS 4.3. Plesk is not yet fully supported for installing on 4.3. I recommend installing CentOS 4.2 (which is also the latest version of CentOS which has a single server cd edition by the way) and then Plesk. Then you can use yum to update to 4.3 without problems.

The dutch Plesk forum is not mine, but a colleague of mine is one of the admins there. And yes, I visit regularly.