How are OS updates handled by default in FC5?

[Dan Kegel]

In olden days, the throbbing update icon on the taskbar would
start up automatically when you logged in.
In FC5, what handles that function?  I know about yum and pirut/pup,
and have even downloaded and looked at their sources,
but I have no idea what a default install does about OS updates.

I ask because I'm experimenting with setting up my own little
repository at kegel.com for some of my own apps, and I would
like to understand how the update process works; will I be able
to push out updates to people who add my repository to
/etc/yum.conf.d, or will users have to do something manual
(like run yum, pup, or pirut by hand)?
- Dan


--
Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv

[Boris Glawe]

The system ist always updated with yum. Yum downloads rpm files and 
installes them. It's not really a frontend for the rpm command, as it 
manipulates the rpm database directly instead of calling the rpm 
command. Anyway the result is always the installation/update of normal 
rpm files.

The dependencies between rpm files are described by xml files, which 
have to reside in a directory called repodata. Actually the existence of 
this directory containing the description files makes a normal directory 
with rpm files to a yum repository. if you'd like to install a program, 
that requires another program or library, yum will  detect this 
dependency with the help of these xml files and will automatically 
download an install the required rpm files.

You will not have to create these xml descriptions files by hand if 
you're going to setup your own repository. This can be done with the 
command createrepo on the serverside. createrepo examines all rpm files 
in the current directory and subdirectories and generates the 
corresponding dependency description. It creates the repodata directory 
automatically.
If you mirror a repository (that is the directory hierarchy containing 
the rpm files and this repodata directory), you will not have to run 
this repodata command, as it's already provided by the mirror server.

If you create your own rpm files, you will always have to run createrepo 
each time you add an updated or new rpm file to you repository/directory.

On the client side you will only have to run "yum -y update", either 
manually or by a cronjob. The latter is the solution chosen by fedora.
Of course the URL of the repository must be specified in a file with the 
suffix ".repo" in /etc/yum.repos.d . Use the already existent repo files 
as an example how these files look like. The syntax is very easy.

greets Boris

[Dan Kegel]

On 4/24/06, Boris Glawe <boris(a)boris-glawe.de&gt; wrote:
>  The system ist always updated with yum.
>  [snip]
>  createrepo examines all rpm files in the current directory and subdirectories
>  [and] creates the repodata directory automatically.
>  If you mirror a repository .., you will not have to run
>  this repodata command, as it's already provided by the mirror server.
>
>  If you create your own rpm files, you will always have to run createrepo
>  each time you add an updated or new rpm file to you repository/directory. 
Thanks for the excellent summary.  That matches what I learned from
http://fedoranews.org/contributors/richard_flude/repo/
and from experimentation.  I now have a shell script which successfully
creates a repository from my own rpms using createrepo.

>  On the client side you will only have to run "yum -y
> update", either
>  manually or by a cronjob. The latter is the solution chosen by fedora.
>  Of course the URL of the repository must be specified in a file with the
>  suffix ".repo" in /etc/yum.repos.d . Use the already existent repo files
>  as an example how these files look like. The syntax is very easy. 
I have the yum.repos.d stuff figured out, too, and I understand that
yum can run from a cron job.

What I'm confused about is - what is the *default* status?  By default,
yum is not run from a cron job, is it?  And pup is not run automatically
on user login, is it?  In other words, is it true that FC5 by default requires
manual action before a user can see the list of current security updates?

That would be in contrast to Red Hat 9 and from Ubuntu, both of which
automatically alert the user (even if he does nothing!) about the available
security patches.

- Dan

[Michael A. Peters]

On Mon, 2006-04-24 at 16:18 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:

>  That would be in contrast to Red Hat 9 and from Ubuntu, both of
> which
>  automatically alert the user (even if he does nothing!) about the available
>  security patches. 
If there is a gui notification - it should NOT pop up if the yum service
is configured to nightly run and has successfully run in the last 24
hours. IMHO, of course.

[Ingemar Nilsson]

"Dan Kegel" <dank(a)kegel.com&gt; writes:

>  What I'm confused about is - what is the *default* status?  By
> default,
>  yum is not run from a cron job, is it?  And pup is not run automatically
>  on user login, is it?  In other words, is it true that FC5 by default
>  requires manual action before a user can see the list of current security
>  updates? 
By default automatic updates are not enabled. There is a cron job for this,
but it only runs if the yum service is enabled. So to enable automatic
updates, enable the yum service.

To see a list of the updated packages, I think that yum sends email to root
containing a list of all recently updated packages once in a while.

Regards
Ingemar

[Tony Nelson]

At 3:02 PM -0700 4/24/06, Dan Kegel wrote:
> In olden days, the throbbing update icon on the taskbar would
> start up automatically when you logged in.
> In FC5, what handles that function? 
Nothing, really, not since FC4.  Something may be in the works for FC6.
Some people think that automatic yum updates take its place -- but such
updates are disabled by default.
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