Wisdom of automating upgrades

[Peter Risdon]

Peter Ulrich Kruppa wrote:

> On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Peter Risdon wrote:
>
>> The main cost of having computers for most companies lies not in 
>> software or hardware, but in support. I have been pondering the 
>> wisdom of automating the upgrade process, so that sources are 
>> cvsup'ed nightly and make buildworld buildkernel etc and portupgrade 
>> happen overnight maybe once a week or month - and perhaps every day a 
>> security fix is announced.
>> [...]
>> I'd be grateful for any input on this. I can picture waking up to 
>> find that every machine I administrate is simultaneously *#!$%ed one 
>> morning. 
>
> This would be the necessary result of complete automatization, 
> wouldn't it?


That's the nub - is it the inevitable outcome?

> Did you think about remote access? All administrative tasks on a 
> FreeBSD system can be done via ssh from a text console. Thus you 
> wouldn't have to be present personally, but keep full control of things.


Yes, that's what I normally do.

Regards,

Peter.