We manage a *lot* of asterisk boxes at client locations at the end of DSL
connections. We have a schedule to make sure each box is updated once a month
(e.g. "these 10 boxes are updated in week 1 by Marcus, then in week 5 by
Tom, etc."). If we can login and run a couple of simple commands to bring
everything up to date, that saves us many hours every month.
For better or worse, we generally use Gentoo Linux on our servers. With one
command (emerge -DuavN world) I can bring a box completely up to date.
Asterisk 1.2's portage packages are generally stable and fairly up-to-date.
So, doing a portage update automatically upgrades asterisk, zaptel, libpri,
speex and any other relevant packages at the same time as updating other core
system libraries.
Installing 1.4 is a pain. The individual installers for each relevant package
have to be grabbed from Digium (or a mirror), then saved somewhere, then
untarred, then ./configure'd, then made, then installed. And in a
month's time if something's been updated, the procedure has to be
repeated. It changes updating a server from a 5 minute operation into an hour or
so.
Yeah, part of it's laziness, but it's more about efficient use of
employee time. If 1.2 does what the client needs and 1.4 would require many
times the admin time, it isn't happening.
In terms of fixing it - Digium could perhaps consider providing packages for the
common *nix distros, which would be updated by them when new versions are
released. We could then add the Digium "layer" (as it's referred
under portage, other package managers probably call it something different) and
it would be sync'd at the same time as the main distro portage tree.
This is something I'd consider paying an annual subscription for.
Regards,
Chris
--=20
C.M. Bagnall, Director, Minotaur I.T. Limited
For full contact details visit http://www.minotaur.it
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