minimizing downtime on upgrades? (for example: mysql 4.1 -> 5.0 or php)

[Chuck Swiger]

On May 22, 2007, at 12:03 PM, Olivier Mueller wrote:
> So I can only do that after the installation of mysql50-client, which
> means all the services will have to be stopped during the  
> compilation of
> mysql50-server, which usually takes some time.
>
> Isn't there a better way?  How do you handle such cases?

Pretty much as you suggest below:

> Same questions for php upgrades: on php5 upgrade, all the other php5-*
> packages have to be compiled too, and keeping the webserver running
> during this time is probably not the best idea.
>
> What I'm going to try is to prepare packages of the ports I have to
> upgrade on a dev/test server, and then install them with pkg_add: is
> that the "right way" ?

You have a build box that you generate new tarballs of the packages  
you want to update (via "make package", "make package-recursive",  
"portupgrade -p", etc), which you can then test and make sure they  
behave sensibly, and then use these to rapidly update your production  
machines with minimal downtime.

-- 
-Chuck