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I'm currently planning to get a VPS from VPS.net for a PHP project. I personally haven't used CentOS (which is recommended all the time) and this is not a good time for me to start learning it, so I want to stick with Ubuntu, as that's the one I have experience with. Now there's the good ol' 8.04 LTS that's well supported, however, 10.04 LTS was released two days ago. I installed it on my laptop and it is pretty slick (doesn't matter for a server) and quick. But I am skeptical about it:

  • Has anyone tried it in a production environment so far?
  • How does it perform versus 8.04?
  • Any serious bugs so far?

6 Answers 6

7

When does your project have to be production ready?

Tomorrow? I'd go with 8.04 LTS.

In a month? Maybe you should develop it on 8.04 and try it out on a local 10.04 virtual machine to evaluate it.

In 6 months? My guess is Canonical will have fixed most problems by then.

Make sure you have a simple repeatable installation routine so that you can deploy on any server you like.

2
  • +1 for documenting the installation steps.
    – Bryan
    May 2, 2010 at 10:41
  • 2-3 months is the expected time for production. Installation will be done via a Python script. May 3, 2010 at 11:53
0

I have jumped onto 10.04 on 3 different machines (different hardware architectures - workstation, laptop, netbook) and found that there are a number of little things that make it lack polish - no show stoppers though. That said, I would recommend waiting a couple of months for them to iron out all the kinks.

0

I've a production MTA (postfix, amavis, spamassassin, clamav & AD Integration) running on Ubuntu 10.04 server, and as yet (touch wood), I've not seen any issues.

I'm planning to upgrade all our Ubuntu servers to 10.04 LTS, as they are all currently running unsupported versions of the OS, however my hand was forced early with this system, as it had just started playing up, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and give it a try.

Whilst installing the system, I used a dokuwiki instance to document every step of the installation process (as per ptman's answer), then if I did have problems, I could easily re-install the system on 8.04.

2
  • 1
    if you'd like to have more automation instead of documenting the steps by hand, check out puppet
    – ptman
    May 2, 2010 at 10:51
  • Puppet is the way. Civilized, in fact. You can even run it on your existing machine, it'll slurp up your config, and you can spit it out on the new one. It's a great tool.
    – chiggsy
    May 15, 2010 at 13:47
0

It depends on the nature of the project and your objectives for stability/uptime.

If you need the project/service you're building to be secure and reliable go for 8, if you're more interested in new features and learning go for 10 - but be prepared to go back to 8 if you need.

0

I upgraded my 10.04 desktop over my 8.04 desktop and 10.04 died on the reboot because it couldn't find network sockets. I tried the 10.04 CD and it couldn't get past the router either. Meanwhile 8.04 works fine.

I know its not the same as a server but my advice is DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. 8.04 works. Stick with it.

0

I went through the same consideration as you and ended up trying out 10.04 on a Zabbix box I was setting up. I've since had a number of problems with the box freezing randomly on restart.

I'm upto my second fresh install now and am still having the same problem. Reading the ubuntu forums it seems a number of similar "random freeze" issues are quite prevalent.

I've done a number of tests on the box and am convinced it's not a hardware problem.

I'd advise caution. Myself, I'm just about to reinstall the Zabbix box back to 8.04. I think I'll head back down this path in another 6 months or so when things are quieter.

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