What's with all the releases?


jowi

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I'm really surprised (and annoyed) by all releases that fly by. One every 2 weeks or so... Everytime i think ok, let's upgrade, there is another one, and another one... and now i see announcements of release candiates, so... they aren't actually ment to use anyway? Only for test purposes?

 

Why is this so prominently announced if these are only beta and testproducts? Why not put these in some test section and only announce the ACTUAL release?

And what IS the next, actual release? And what was the last actual release? I'm on 6.5.3...

Edited by jowi
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13 minutes ago, jowi said:

And what IS the next, actual release? And what was the last actual release? I'm on 6.5.3...

6.6.6 is current stable

 

the releases are Release Candidates which are technically beyond beta but before full release.  I'd imagine that since @limetech can only test so many configurations themselves, they rely on the community to see if there are glitches with the thousands of different hardware options people use.

 

Personally, I stick to stable releases...only installing them after they have been in the wild for 2+ weeks

Theres nobody twisting arms to run RC software, so no need to be up in arms about the testing process

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23 minutes ago, jowi said:

Why not put these in some test section and only announce the ACTUAL release?

They are.  Bug Reports - Prereleases.  Stables are announced in the Announcement Section

 

24 minutes ago, jowi said:

they aren't actually ment to use anyway?

Personally, I don't see why not.  But everyone has to make the decision for themselves, and if installing a Prerelease be prepared for very often updates becoming available.

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1 minute ago, Squid said:

They are.  Bug Reports - Prereleases.  Stables are announced in the Announcement Section

So there is a "stable" release every 2 or 3 weeks? Really? You can't be serious...? 

If these releases are so stable, why are they beeing folowed up in such a hurry? 

I really don't understand the release managment of unraid anymore.

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4 minutes ago, jowi said:

So there is a "stable" release every 2 or 3 weeks? Really? You can't be serious...? 

No.  There's a new release candidate every 2-3 weeks.  Stables usually every few months or so.

 

4 minutes ago, jowi said:

If these releases are so stable, why are they beeing folowed up in such a hurry?

Betas (or Release Candidate zeros) aren't stable, and have a limited invites as to who runs them

 

RC's are stable in that they won't cause data loss, but there may be issues.  For each and every release candidate, it means that due to the wider testing someone found something else wrong on the previous (usually UI issues), or a refinement took place, etc.

 

You have the choice as to what to run.  Simply under Tools - Update OS, you can select either "Next" (Release Candidates) or "Stable" (Stable / Production releases)

Edited by Squid
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As I recall, there was a flurry of releases around 6.5.x - 6.6.x, and many of them dealt with security issues that were being discovered and patched in the Linux kernal and other core systems that Unraid relies on.

 

I too was a bit surprised by the flurry, but I dutifully installed them because I've got a lot of data that's very important to me on my server and wanted it to be as safe as possible.

 

Currently, I'm running 6.6.6 and my uptime is 44 days. 6.7 will be out soonish, and I'll install that with the associated reboot. I'm not getting the 130-150 days uptime that I had in the 5.x days, but, things are getting patched more quickly, so it's a trade of worth making, to me. Also, the update process is so simple, it's really not a hassle.

 

I don't run any of the betas or RC's because I'm not interested in messing around with my one, production level, server. If I had the collection of hardware that some folks around here had, I'd probably run an RC on one or two boxen, as well.

 

My 2 cents worth.

Edited by FreeMan
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8 minutes ago, Squid said:

No.  There's a new release candidate every 2-3 weeks.  Stables usually every few months or so.

But you just said that stable releases were announced in the announcement section... so are releases there stable, or candidates? I guess it is all thrown in together, adding to the confusion of people like me who come here once in a while, and not every day...

 

So better rename the announcement section in 'release candiates' and add a section for 'stable releases' and dont use 'announcements' for EVERYTHING.

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7 minutes ago, Squid said:

Stable Releases are announced in the Announcement section

 

Release Candidates are announced in the Pre-Releases section of Bug Reports

 

But if i look in the announcement section, there are new releases announced every few weeks, you can't even keep up with it... and pages of issues are filled up in days... everytime again and again. That is what makes this so confusing, and it keeps me from installing ANYTHING since i have no clue whatsoever what is latest and what not. What is good and what not. Like i said a few posts ago, i've been on the brink of updating a few times only to see that now there was 6.5.7 and then an 6.5.8 and 6.6.4 and 6.6.5 etc etc it NEVER STOPPED. So i stopped. 

 

This way of releasing 'stable releases' is extremely confusing. I'm not willing to update every few weeks and risk changing a lot of stuff. And if there are weeks in between STABLE releases, no way these were stable... this doesn't give me a lot of trust in unraid anymore...

Edited by jowi
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3 hours ago, jowi said:

But if i look in the announcement section, there are new releases announced every few weeks, you can't even keep up with it... and pages of issues are filled up in days... everytime again and again. That is what makes this so confusing, and it keeps me from installing ANYTHING since i have no clue whatsoever what is latest and what not. What is good and what not. Like i said a few posts ago, i've been on the brink of updating a few times only to see that now there was 6.5.7 and then an 6.5.8 and 6.6.4 and 6.6.5 etc etc it NEVER STOPPED. So i stopped. 

 

This way of releasing 'stable releases' is extremely confusing. I'm not willing to update every few weeks and risk changing a lot of stuff. And if there are weeks in between STABLE releases, no way these were stable... this doesn't give me a lot of trust in unraid anymore...

This was to ensure those of us that care about actually maintaining our machines get upstream security patches and bug fixes.  If that's not your priority, then ignore them.

 

Put a better way, do you turn off Windows updates because they cause your machine to reboot an inopportune moments?

 

If LT don't release and update regularly they get called out for not tackling security issues and updating packages.  

When they do, you complain about the frequency of updates.

 

To me it seems the easiest solution is for you to ignore the updates.  Then everyone is happy?

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FFS. If you don’t trust a company for constantly improving their product gtfo. If you can’t understand the difference between a release candidate and a stable release after it’s been explained several times, you should stick with macOS, much easier to understand.

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47 minutes ago, jowi said:

@1812 if you can't give me a normal answer, go fuck yourself.

 

Again, my point is, there are ANNOUNCEMENTS of STABLE releases every 2 or 3 weeks. That is INSANE.

From the very start of this thread, your posts have come across as confrontational and rude. If you re-read the replies, you might feel a little stupid because your question has been answered many times over. You just can't or won't understand.

 

Now if you have such an issue with it, go get a NAS box and ditch Unraid.

 

Seriously, what is wrong with some people!

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Well that escalated quickly...

 

@jowi I'm not sure how familiar you are with software development, so please excuse me if you know this already. The old waterfall style style of software development would have releases very far apart. The problem here is that say a company creates a release every 6 months, by the time the release has landed to end users there may have been security flaws detected and not even in the application. Things like Spectre or Meltdown which has nothing to do with developers but they will need to fix them. Using this old methodology developers will have to scramble to release a hotfix so as to not leave customers' machines vulnerable.

 

Now days many companies are moving towards an iterative approach. This means it's nto uncommon to have stable releases every two weeks in the case of a scrum approach to developing software. The benefit here is that people can benefit from new features, updates, security patches frequently. However in the case of unRAID where the landscape includes an infinite amount of combinations to hardware, that can make testing very tricky. Hence the RC candidates which are tested "live" by the community and others. I personally am happy with frequent stable updates. It means there's people looking at improving the system all the time. That being said I don't ride the RC train or update as soon as an update is released. And that goes for ANY OS that i'm using.

 

TL;DR: Frequent updates = good. They are entirely optional but I highly recommend them if you want to protect your server.

 

I think it's best we maintain a level of respect. Many forums are an abyss of toxicity and filth and there's just no need. That being said I'm just some idiot on the internet so you don't have to take any of this :)

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3 hours ago, jowi said:

@1812 if you can't give me a normal answer, go fuck yourself.

Self-love is the best love. You should try it sometime. You'd probably be less angsty. 

 

3 hours ago, trekkiedj said:

Again, my point is, there are ANNOUNCEMENTS of STABLE releases every 2 or 3 weeks. That is INSANE.

 

You have NO CLUE what you are talking about. So instead, let's all enjoy this mashup while you contemplate your inability to comprehend the information presented to you.

 

 

Edited by 1812
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Hi everyone,

 

Well it looks like this topic has run its course and its time to be closed.  That said, I am going to leverage executive privilege here to have the final word.

 

On 2/17/2019 at 12:40 PM, jowi said:

I'm really surprised (and annoyed) by all releases that fly by. One every 2 weeks or so... Everytime i think ok, let's upgrade, there is another one, and another one...

 

I think you're probably the first user ever in our history to complain that we update our product TOO often.  Keep in mind, all updates are elective, meaning you have to trigger them yourself to make them occur.  We aren't Windows 10.  We won't auto-update your server / reboot it without your permission.  That said, let's go ahead and address the "why" that is really behind your comment.

 

Updates to Unraid OS vary in content.  There are major releases (v4, v5, v6), then there are minor releases (6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, etc.), and then there are security/bugfix releases (6.6.1, 6.6.2, 6.6.3, etc).  Features tend to only get added to major and minor releases, though occasionally may be tossed in with a bugfix release if they are incredibly simple/basic in nature.  Going back to your chief complaint, it's not about major or minor releases at all, but rather, the security/bugfix releases that happen more frequently.

 

Bugfixes themselves typically address edge cases that weren't discovered until a user with the right combination of things discovers a bug.  Anything to do with our code (the array code, the webGui; things that we directly code ourselves), we are pretty quick to respond and patch.  Often times this patch will do nothing for the vast majority of users, but only because those users didn't have that "right combination" yet for the bug to occur.

 

These bugfix releases also tend to contain package updates that have CVEs issued.  If you're not familiar with CVEs or why they matter, I suggest some reading on the subject (https://cve.mitre.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposures).  In short, Unraid OS contains a large number of common open-source software packages to make it function.  From things like the web server, to Docker, VMs, and even the various network file sharing protocols we support, these components are built and maintained by the open source software community.  As with any software solution, bad actors in the world are constantly looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities that may exist to a nefarious end.  As such, the good guys constantly are evaluating their own wares and doing their best to keep any exploits patched from use.  This means sometimes frequent updates.

 

On 2/17/2019 at 1:36 PM, jowi said:

This way of releasing 'stable releases' is extremely confusing. I'm not willing to update every few weeks and risk changing a lot of stuff. And if there are weeks in between STABLE releases, no way these were stable... this doesn't give me a lot of trust in unraid anymore...

 

I'm honestly not sure what part is "confusing" about updates.  When you click "check for updates", you can easily see the number designation of the available update and compare that to the existing number in the top header of the UI to see how much of an update it really is.  In addition, there is a little "i" symbol next to the updated release which you can click to tell you what's in the new update.  And of course you can always visit the forums to see the newly announced release and what people have to say about it.  Point is, it's fairly trivial to determine the meat behind an update and whether or not its "changing a lot of stuff."  I don't think anything significant was changed in any of the 6.6 bugfix releases.  I also don't see any specific complaint from you about a specific change.  Seems like your complaint is that you just don't want to click the update button, which is understandable, and also completely solvable...just don't click it ;-).

 

On 2/17/2019 at 12:40 PM, jowi said:

and now i see announcements of release candiates, so... they aren't actually ment to use anyway? Only for test purposes?

 

I think the others here have done a pretty good job of explaining the differences between our release candidates and our stable releases, so I'll refrain from beating a dead horse.

 

Now let's talk about the point where this thread got derailed...

 

I'm all for people having the freedom to express themselves in our forum.  If you got a problem with us or our wares, you're more than welcome to use this place to complain and make yourself heard.

 

BUT............

 

When you blatantly ignore responses to your comments and continue your argument without addressing valid points, you're not engaging in a discussion, but rather, noise pollution.  Want to see things change?  Address the counter-arguments and prove your case.  Others have done this in the past and have been wildly successful in getting us to change things about Unraid.  Your approach here will change nothing only because you have made no case for a change and when challenged by the community, you ignored those challenges to your argument.

 

In addition, our community members, while with the best intentions, need to avoid bringing the discussion down a level to that of personal attacks and a "gtfo" attitude.  My recommendation to folks is to take the thumper approach:

 

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Thanks!

 

All the best,

 

Jon

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