[Pacemaker] Pacemaker 1.0.x, Debian, and upgrades from Heartbeat 2.1.x

[Florian Haas]

Andrew and everyone,

apologies upfront if this is turning into a rant. This has been somewhat
bothering me for a while.

A bit of backdrop.

- The docs
(http://www.clusterlabs.org/doc/en-US/Pacemaker/1.0/html/Pacemaker_Explained/apes03s02.html)
have claimed for a while that Pacemaker 1.0.x is compatible with
Heartbeat 2.1.3 (aka Pacemaker 0.6). Thus it ought to be safe to expect
to be able to do rolling upgrades from 2.1.3/2.1.4 to 1.0.x.

- Martin (madkiss) has been busting his butt for months trying to roll
useful Pacemaker packages for Debian. Not an easy task since as everyone
is well aware, Corosync has been a moving target for quite some time.

- Debian is nearing a feature freeze for its upcoming release, squeeze.
If we want Pacemaker in squeeze, we need to whip its Debian packages
into shape, quickly.

- In http://www.clusterlabs.org/wiki/UsagePoll, surprisingly for some,
Debian came out as a highly popular platform for the Pacemaker and
Heartbeat/CRM cluster stacks.

- We universally tell users with Heartbeat/CRM issues to upgrade to
Pacemaker.

- Debian users expect that they will be able to do distribution release
upgrades without major headaches, and perhaps contrary to some other
distros, Debian usually delivers on that promise.

- Thus, we had better make the Heartbeat/CRM -> Pacemaker upgrade as
seamless as possible when Debian users upgrade from lenny to squeeze.

Martin and others (including myself, to a minor extent) have been
running around in circles enabling Debian users to be able to upgrade
their existing Heartbeat/CRM clusters to Pacemaker. Martin is almost
there, finally having gotten an on-the-fly package upgrade and CIB
conversion completed, so people will be able to upgrade from Heartbeat
2.1.x to Pacemaker on Heartbeat and it will "just work". Almost.

Because, quoting from the documentation, rolling upgrades are "currently
broken between Pacemaker 0.6.x and 1.0.x. If there is sufficient demand,
the work to repair 0.6 -> 1.0 compatibility will be carried out."

I firmly believe there is sufficient demand. I therefore ask that this
breakage be fixed. Perhaps other Debian users can second that request of
mine.

I put up 1 keg of hops-and-barley beverage as a bounty. :)

Thanks for your time.
Cheers,
Florian



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