up2date not automatic

[Tom Mitchell]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Mike Klinke wrote:
> > >
> > >up2date --nox -i yum
> >
> > Thanks Mike. I tried that and found , as you surely already knew
> > and I did not, that it is a purely "command line" way to run yum.
....
> This isn't a way to run yum.  This is a way, via up2date, to install 
> the yum RPM. 
> 
> Since you didn't have yum installed on your RH9 system there was no 
> need to install yum when you upgraded from RH9 to Fedora. On the 
> other hand the up2date utility was upgraded to use yum repositories 
> instead of RHN repositories.
> 
> In short, there is no need to install yum if you plan to use up2date 
> to keep your system current.

Some people are confusing transport/protocol/method with tool.
There are two tools.

Coded into 'up2date' is code that knows how to use 'yum'
distribution resources.  After an update from RH9 to FC1 the rhn
directory used by up2date (/etc/sysconfig/rhn) will be updated to
know of the primary FC1 "yum" distribution sites see the file
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources.

"yum" exists as a stand alone tool (/usr/bin/yum). It is
controled by the config file /etc/yum.conf.

Perhaps one reason to install both is that they almost share
code. For example these compiled python files are part of
seperate packages.
   /usr/share/rhn/up2date_client/grubcfg.pyc
   /usr/share/yum/grubcfg.pyc
One might contain a bug and the other would facilitate the
updating of the other.  I am not sure if the .py files for
these were the same.  These .pyc files differ.

Currently missing in both up2date and yum packages is packaged
information on known mirror sites.  Perhaps if 'famous' mirrors
were included as comments folks might use them more.  Or perhaps
someone could post a reminder and a pointer to the famous mirror
list once a month.

Yes, the layers and service options involved in up2date, rhn, yum
are confusing.  One point is that the redhat side of rhn had data
records describing your machine and depending on the service
purchased it was able to update your machine.  The FC1 strategy
is to poll distribution sites and have the local machine decide
what is needed.


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