What's new in 2.9.50:

*) nand improvement for RB532A

This if from the changelog.

It appears on several other releases.
Could you please be more specific about the improvement ?
( meaning what kind of improvement ? the way it is handled, what areas are written and how, or what exactly, i mean if a whole release is just for that, we should see more light into this, to know what we are getting for an upgrade, and if we should bother for several dousins of rb's to upgrade. )

It would be useful if the fixes in each ChangeLog could be classified with keywords, e.g. Critical, Important, Optional, to allow users to make an informed decision rather than just guess as to whether that particular release is worth applying or could be left to a subsequent release.

Critical would be used for fixes like memory leaks or other bugs that could cause system crashes, lock-up, other major service failures or security issues.
Important would cover fixes that significantly impair service or features, but would not lead to a crash or lock-up.
Optional would be for cosmetic fixes that have no real operational effect.

As I add more MikroTik devices it is starting to take a significant amount of my time to upgrade when a new release is available and I don't want to waste precious time on what could be a trivial upgrade.

Since 2.9.50 contains only one fix it must be fairly important, otherwise why bother to make a dedicated release?

Something is being withheld, and I'm not sure what, and that's how conspiricies grow.

They made a new release of a stable operating system. It made some nand improvements, which is sort of a vague low-level sounding tweek.

Somehow, this breaks a user manager feature, which should be way higher level feature; far opposite end of the OSI model scale actually. What connects usermanager to nand memory control is a whole bunch of operating system stuff in the middle.

Either this release is a minor improvement not worth upgrading, or there are complex changes that affect usermanager that are not documented in the changelog are too difficult to fix before releasing it. Are these changes so very important to users that it's worth breaking these usermanager features? Being able to backup strikes me as pretty important.

In addition to better automated testing, and more detailed changelogs, I would support the idea of classifying the importance of changes.

Check how HP does it. Their release notes are certainly overkill, but the describe the new enhancements, and also have a log of software fixes describing the problem and whether it can crash the switch or juts hinder a feature.
http://cdn.procurve.com/training/Manual ... 906003.pdf

Furthermore, why would a release of 2.9.50 exist for x86 if the only change was for the rb5xx nand?

Well, it's just us.......... walking in the dark.......

jp -
Maine huh - I lived in Calais, Milltown, Woddland (Bailyville) and Eastport for many years - where are you from?

I also know that gunzoid lives in NH...just down the road from you in Maine.

You're not alone in the dark - there are lots of us out there! :)

Thom

I'm in Rockland/Owls Head. Been here all my short life except college.

midcoast.com is my work.

jp -
Yep - I've been there visiting.... Small world sometimes. :)


Thom

Something is being withheld, and I'm not sure what, and that's how conspiricies grow.

not the first time they've updated something and not included it in the changelog.... i've been complaining about the poor details of the changelog for 2 years, and only one release (beta 2 i think??) have they made any effort at improving things. I've made posts (only to be deleted) emailed in suggesting version / bug tracking software, and even discussed it with Tully directly at MUM, nothing seems to change the detail level of the "change_log"... it's one of my (if not the) biggest pet peeves about MikroTik...

Being a software developer myself, I can understand some reasons for not including ALL details on every upgrade as it usually just create more questions. However, in a case like this where a seemingly 'innocent' update cause issues in 'unrelated' areas, I also think that just one more sentence or two to include areas worked on would help, e.g 'Misscelaneous updates in usermanager'.

Also see:

http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20283