by Visvanath Ratnaweera.
Hi Rick
You asked:
> When you're installing Ubuntu server, you have the choice to manage upgrades by having ubuntu install security updates automatically or no automatic updates (that being the default). Has anyone had issues with automatic updates causing future grief with a Moodle server?
This is outside of Moodle and you'll get better advice in an Ubuntu forum. This is my highly subjective opinion in short.
As Ken has pointed out, it all depends upon your knowledge of the OS. And the demands you have! What is more important for you: reliability or security (or performance or ...)? Security updates help one but may break the other. It goes further. How high are those demands, for example?
I don't know Ubuntu but have been using Debian for some time now. Debian has high standards of reliability and security. The price is that it won't bring you the latest and the shiniest software. Still a system update is a vulnerable moment. You must understand the system well to recover if it breaks during an update.
Assuming you do not understand deep inside Linux servers I too would take a safe path:
- Do _not_ automatically install any updates
- subscribe to the security mailing list of your distribution
- do fake upgrades manually to see what is coming
- compare the results against the security notices
- consult the website of your distribution
- Still scan the results of the fake upgrade for possible version collisions with the Moodle version you run (security updates do not make big version jumps in Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc., nevertheless)
- take site backups and polish a method how to restore them
- practice installing the server many times so that you know the time you need to put a new server on-line with the data restored from a site backup
> I stumbled upon http://www.syndrega.ch/?p=14 which suggests to me that the autoupdates option shouldn't be a problem, as the article is geared towards Moodle installations.
I'm deeply sorry that you stumbled upon those blog posts. I'm the person who planted them!
![big grin]( "big grin")
You asked:
> When you're installing Ubuntu server, you have the choice to manage upgrades by having ubuntu install security updates automatically or no automatic updates (that being the default). Has anyone had issues with automatic updates causing future grief with a Moodle server?
This is outside of Moodle and you'll get better advice in an Ubuntu forum. This is my highly subjective opinion in short.
As Ken has pointed out, it all depends upon your knowledge of the OS. And the demands you have! What is more important for you: reliability or security (or performance or ...)? Security updates help one but may break the other. It goes further. How high are those demands, for example?
I don't know Ubuntu but have been using Debian for some time now. Debian has high standards of reliability and security. The price is that it won't bring you the latest and the shiniest software. Still a system update is a vulnerable moment. You must understand the system well to recover if it breaks during an update.
Assuming you do not understand deep inside Linux servers I too would take a safe path:
- Do _not_ automatically install any updates
- subscribe to the security mailing list of your distribution
- do fake upgrades manually to see what is coming
- compare the results against the security notices
- consult the website of your distribution
- Still scan the results of the fake upgrade for possible version collisions with the Moodle version you run (security updates do not make big version jumps in Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc., nevertheless)
- take site backups and polish a method how to restore them
- practice installing the server many times so that you know the time you need to put a new server on-line with the data restored from a site backup
> I stumbled upon http://www.syndrega.ch/?p=14 which suggests to me that the autoupdates option shouldn't be a problem, as the article is geared towards Moodle installations.
I'm deeply sorry that you stumbled upon those blog posts. I'm the person who planted them!
