Update Manager / Broken Packages / X Failsafe

[Saad Shakhshir]

We should not care what "our competitor" is doing if it's not what we think
is right.  Rolling out an update that breaks X is a serious error on
Ubuntu's part.  It clearly doesn't happen often (I think this is the first
time), but regardless, even one such case can shake the foundation of
people's belief in its reliability, as it clearly has (read some blogs and
the ubuntuforums).

The question is how do we learn from this and improve Ubuntu - both the
process and the OS itself - with the goal of making sure that it doesn't
happen again and that if it does, the effects can be reversed by the average
user so that their computer is still usable until a fix is rolled out.

So the way I see it thus far the discussion has taken two paths:

1) The process - there needs to be better screening of updates prior to
getting released worldwide.  Some have suggested an alternative yum
repository.  Others have noted that there already is a "dapper-proposed"
repository that would allow testers to test out updates before they get
rolled.  This seems like a very good way to get tests done on a decent sized
number of systems and to get feedback before pushing out an update.

2) The software - there needs to be reasonable fallback mechanism in the
case where a user installs an update that borks their system.  This should
be rather straightforward using apt since that is the one officially
supported mechanism for installing software.  You can already do this
manually with an 'apt-get install package=version' , but it would be
relatively simple to keep track of and revert the last updates made.
RedHat's up2date utility has a 'rollback' option.

I tried to find a spec for number 2, but didn't.  Is there one that i'm
missing?  Otherwise I'll create it myself.

-SS-

On 8/23/06, Hervé Fache <Herve at lucidia.net> wrote:
>
> On 8/23/06, Micah J. Cowan <micah at cowan.name> wrote:
> > > our competitor has already done this sort of things, and serious
> companies'
> > > IT do not roll updates until they feel it's safe to do so
> >
> > I don't think it's wise to distinguish between "serious" companies and
> > others.
>
> Serious was refering to the IT service, not the company (not obvious
> in English, I know).
>
> > And I can't think of any time in the remotely recent past when "our
> > competitor" has actually broken a system due to automatic upgrades...
>
> Come to my place and I'll show you a broken driver (official, from
> Windows update) hanging up XP, or rebooting it unexpectedly, depending
> on its humor! Fix: go to nVidia's site and get their driver. Would
> _any_ user think of that?
>
> Hope that clarifies,
> Hervé.
> --
> ubuntu-devel mailing list
> ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
>
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