When a phase fails

Reading the failure, deciding between FIXING FORWARD and ABANDONING, and what an abandoned cycle LEAVES BEHIND. Read the failure first, and read the worker log rather than the main log — Module 4 Lesson 6. The main log says a worker failed; the worker log says why, and the why decides everything that follows. FIXING FORWARD IS RIGHT WHEN THE CAUSE IS ENVIRONMENTAL, AND MOST CAUSES ARE. Space, a permission, a lock held by a session somebody left open, an object in an unexpected state. Fix it, restart the worker, and the cycle continues — Module 4 Lesson 7, and this is the ordinary case rather than the exception. ABANDONING IS RIGHT WHEN THE CAUSE IS THE PATCH ITSELF OR WHEN THE WINDOW IS GONE. A genuine defect, an unmet prerequisite that cannot be satisfied now, or simply the clock — if the remaining work will not fit before people…

In this module: Module 7 · Patching

1. 1Why you are patching at all
2. 2Kinds of patch, and what each touches
3. 3Reading a readme properly
4. 4Online patching: the model
5. 5The adop cycle, phase by phaseFree preview
6. 6When a phase fails
7. 7Abandoning and cleaning up
8. 8Rollback: what is actually reversible
9. 9Patching the database tier
10. 10Testing a patch before production
11. 11The outage plan
12. 12Patching cadence, and falling behind
13. 13What breaks: five patching failures
14. 14Lab briefing · Apply, fail, abandon, apply again