Upgrading a live server with rdist

[Jamie]

   I am trying to upgrade a running production server with rdist, but some
of the files will not update. I am getting messages like:


rdist: server.foo.net:/bin/rcp: Operation not permitted
updating: /kernel
rdist: server.foo.net:/kernel: Operation not permitted
updating: /sbin/init
rdist: server.foo.net:/sbin/init: Operation not permitted



   It appears rdist will not allow updates on processes that are loaded
and running in memory. Is there any way to accomplish this with rdist or
one of it's cousins?


   We have one test machine which is identical to all our production
servers new patches are compiled into and are then tested. If it tests
okay, we'd like to be able to simply run rdist from there out to our other
production systems.

   We've also considered sharing the /usr/src/ directory after the tests
pass, and then recompiling the binaries on the remote systems, but to do
that you need to run mergemaster on each machine and bring it into single
user mode. We'd like to avoid that downtime, iff possible.

   Anyone have insight/suggestions that would help guide us? Thanks,



    - Jamie









"A friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself."