This may seem like a stupid question… OK this IS a stupid question… But I ask from many problematic experiences.
I would say out of at least a dozen installs of FreePBX over the years, ALL have died from some kind of failed update, or system corruption on update. This begs me to ask the question, should I actually bother updating or is it better to set it and forget it.
I currently have 4 systems live at the moment 1 installed about a year ago, 1 6 months ago, and a pair done about a month ago. Each are supposed to be on the same version/system/update. But it’s clear there are issues growing.
The 1 year old is already giving odd problems. Updates cause random “UNDEFINED” banners to flash, wonky behavior in the GUI, CDR and recordings died and took a day worth of pissing around with the database to bring back… Basically random glitches.
The 6 month old is holding OK. But I had some really strange GUI issues and it took a full yum update and reboot to clear them.
The 1 month old pair seems to be working cleanly.
My gut feeling, is the longer you let the machine sit before updating, the better the chance of it corrupting. (Sounds logical). But I have had so many updates kill machines, even when I didn’t let them go longer than a month, I am hesitant to update the machines all the time.
Auto update sounds like my savior, but the last thing I want is to wake up to a dead switch, and no idea where things broke.
Does anyone have input in this? All these machines are in datacenters, so we’re not dealing with bad power and strange reboots etc.
Also, secondary question. What is the proper update procedure? I’ve been told to yum update the machine before doing module updates, I’ve been told not to do that. I’ve been told use the GUI, yet the GUI errors. I’ve gotten pure garbage output on the system update tab, to the machine telling me it’s not activated, even though it is.
This really is a stupid question, but I’ve never had so many problems with something so simple as updates. It’s like playing russian roulette with the entire server.