[OpenSIPS-Users] Upgrade version problems in a production system (mediaproxy)

[Adrian Georgescu]

On Jul 27, 2009, at 9:05 AM, Carlo Dimaggio wrote:

> Hi Adrian,
>
> I don't have strong knowledge about "pure" debian, until now I used  
> Ubuntu and RH-based systems... but I knew that in production systems  
> the unstable/testing isn't a good choice because of possible  
> different bugs due to not much testing of the new packages.

> All people tell me that is a risk using a debian unstable... (also  
> this faq http://wooledge.org/~greg/sidfaq.html).

This page sounds like a horror story. Is easy to follow such advices  
as new comers cannot make judgements on their own and simply follow  
blindly what other people are saying cause is cheaper than learning.  
The question you have to ask is who are the people that made those  
statements, are they a reliable source for your particular application?

I have a different story based on my personal experience.

> My question is: can I use a debian unstable in production "mission- 
> critical" telephony systems?

We do use only unstable for more than five years now for highly  
available SIP platforms, if this gives you some indication of  
reliability.

The software we are talking about, is natively developed, tested and  
deployed on unstable distribution. So the fact that it works on stable  
today is a matter of temporary luck (the previous debian stable was  
several years old, nothing recent enough worked on it). Based on  
experience, sonner or later some library will not be available in  
stable and you will need to repackage all dependency chain by  
yourself. The amount of incremental work you will need to do, will  
exceed the 'safe feeling' you get from running a so called stable  
distribution. There is no magic bullet, 'stable' does not mean it will  
be trouble free especially when it comes to running such bleeding edge  
software.

Adrian