Re: named failing to restart after updating to RHEL3 U4

[Josh Kelley <josh jbc edu>]

Lee Whatley, Contractor wrote:

> Tommy Davis wrote:
>
> > On a related note: I wonder if people running productions server have 
> > the automatic update enabled. It seems to me that once in a while an 
> > update breaks things.
>
> There is no way I would use automatic update, EVAR.  There have been 
> way too many instances where packages have been released before they 
> are really "ready for prime time".  Anytime an update gets released, I 
> put it on a test system first and then try my darndest to see if I can 
> break it.  Only after testing do I manually push the updates out to 
> production.

I feel like a novice for asking, but what's the easiest way to do this?  
I know that I should be testing updates before I install them on 
production servers, but I've always felt like the headache of (a) 
keeping a test server with a configuration that's relatively similar to 
my mail server and web server and file servers and everything else and 
(b) figuring out a suite of tests that's reasonably likely to hit 
functionality that might break is great enough that I instead just 
install updates without testing and hope that I can catch whatever 
problems occur before people get too upset.  Is there some easy testing 
technique that I'm missing?

Josh Kelley