Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] 2021-11-23-mariadb-database-restore-maybe-required: add item

[Sam James]

> On 25 Nov 2021, at 13:37, Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@g.o> wrote:
> For the records:
> I hope that this news item won't get delayed by the recent ComRel bug someone filled against me regarding this news item.

No need to reference that here. Please keep that to e.g. -core.

> While we often rush with news items and don't wait the 72h listed in GLEP 42, this one should go out as soon as possible.
> Why?
> Because every minute we wait will increase the chance that someone affected by this will be unable to recover. This is (for those not familiar with database engines) because bin logs are about to expire (getting overwritten) in typical setups after 3-5 days. And in case someone will learn about this not before next week and has to do a full restore, that user will lose about one week of data...

While it seems like the news item may be worth pursuing out of caution, I would expect people operating sophisticated database setups to do at least one of:
- slot the DB version in their world file;
- mask newer versions and unmask when ready;
- upgrade all machines to the same version at the same time (for clustering);
- read the world upgrade output and not permit the downgrade?

I also echo the other requests to add a downgrade warning based on ${REPLACING_VERSIONS} given this is a
common issue with databases.

Also, while this does not affect the rationale for this news item, I would note that I would expect
anybody using Gentoo in production to be using stable or at the very least to have backups
of a server running on ~arch that they're upgrading without reading the upgrades/downgrades
carefully for software they rely on.

thanks,
sam