I’m looking into setting up a firewall server (as well as some others later on) and wondered if there was any benefit to using SLES over openSUSE, especially in supported life?
I want to be able to “set up and forget” this server, except for security updates.
I’m sure SLES is supported for a long length of time for enterprises but I would be trying this without a subscription and set it up to use openSUSE repositories (or would it be better to not?) so I don’t know if I will lose any of this benefit with SLES instead of using openSUSE.
I know I can set up openSUSE (like 12.1) and leave it, but after 18 months post-release it reaches EOL and even security updates stop if I recall correctly.
I’d prefer to stick with *SUSE instead of moving to CentOS or Ubuntu LTS (just came from there) as I am currently planning on switching my other (client) machines over to openSUSE and would prefer a “single” distribution instead of mixing.
Any advice, suggestions or links are appreciated. I’m fairly new to this (the firewall server, servers and networks, and SUSE) and just starting.
Hi
I would use openSUSE, build it as an installable appliance on SUSE
Studio (you can test your build, tweak and save), then you can either
update your appliance on SUSE Studio and check, or just update via repo
switch and zypper dup.
You can start with a minimal system then add your requirements, make
for a very lean machine
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.1 (x86_64) Kernel 3.1.10-1.9-desktop
up 4 days 19:51, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU
I haven’t used Studio much, but if I set up an image of the server I want I can “upgrade” it in Studio and test it before I download it or update from repos?
I’m not familiar with Suse Studio, though I have poked around it a bit. I’ll check into it, thanks!
> I’m sure SLES is supported for a long length of time for enterprises
> but I would be trying this without a subscription and set it up to use
> openSUSE repositories (or would it be better to not?) so I don’t know if
> I will lose any of this benefit with SLES instead of using openSUSE.
You should not mix. It should break.
> I know I can set up openSUSE (like 12.1) and leave it, but after 18
> months post-release it reaches EOL and even security updates stop if I
> recall correctly.
There is evergreen.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
First off dragonbite, I am envious of your selected avatar, what a brilliant idea to put coffee and openSUSE together. I like your idea very much.
Now, I must say I suggest going with openSUSE 11.4 and look into using Evergreen when its comes to its end of life, just as Carlos has suggested. I like 11.4 for a server because it had not yet switched over to systemd, which you may not like just yet for a server. Evergreen promises to extend its life past this September, but I don’t know any more than presented by the following link.
Keeping the kernel updated is half of the security update battle, but not everything of course. If you can get the software and server to last three years, you normally have done your job, which is all one can ask of a server in my opinion.
On Wed, 16 May 2012 15:16:02 +0000, dragonbite wrote:
> I’m looking into setting up a firewall server (as well as some others
> later on) and wondered if there was any benefit to using SLES over
> openSUSE, especially in supported life?
Without maintenance, you don’t get updates (I think that includes
security updates) after the initial 30 or 60 days that’s included with
the eval.
Thanks. I am part of a number of forums and I like using a similar but specified avatars for each of the forums and as luck would have it, each distro has a coffee mug they are selling! I’m even thinking of ordering one!
That sounds like a great plan, and as luck would have it I have (if I can find it again ) a DVD for 11.4 which I got in a marketing packet a while ago to pass out. Yea, for keeping all these older CDs/DVDs! My wife may want to kill me, but now I have a reason! rotfl!
Yeah, 3 years is not a bad length and by that time I may have some new power-efficient system to replace it with. Not to mention I think that’s close to the life my wireless router gave me.
Will Evergreen also update the kernel or is S.G.T.B. the quicker way? Hopefully it would be easy to select an older kernel if the new one doesn’t work for whatever reason.
I created a basic image with SUSE Studio, but I may hold off on that for the possible web servers as those I will want to be more up-to-date on PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL and/or mod_mono.
Yeah, 3 years is not a bad length and by that time I may have some new power-efficient system to replace it with. Not to mention I think that’s close to the life my wireless router gave me.
Will Evergreen also update the kernel or is S.G.T.B. the quicker way? Hopefully it would be easy to select an older kernel if the new one doesn’t work for whatever reason.
I created a basic image with SUSE Studio, but I may hold off on that for the possible web servers as those I will want to be more up-to-date on PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL and/or mod_mono.
Great advice everybody! Thanks!
So, normally you get kernel updates, but only for the original kernel version that came with that version of openSUSE. Now look at openSUSE 12.1, which is newer than 11.4, that came with kernel version 3.1 and now kernel 3.1.10 has been pegged as being End Of Life. With SAKC and SGTB, you can load any newer kernel you desire, stick with the most stable released version, now up to 3.3.6 as I recall. You can load 3.3.6 into openSUSE 11.4 if you wanted to do so and it does not remove the latest kernel you got from Evergreen. It just provides more options and using the latest kernel means you get the most recent hardware support out there as well as all included security fixes present in the main line kernel releases. It is just another option that you can use.
