Redhat to Fedora - up2date/RHN

[nosp]

On Tue, 2003-11-04 at 21:07, Charles Gregory wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, nosp wrote:
> > The trained monkey can still run up2date and it will still work ok.
> 
> That was not my worry. My worry was how to get the TM to remember to do
> so. I'm a highly trained monkey (HTM) but it is all too easy to neglect
> checking for patches until a Red Hat notice comes in.... ;-)

Ah...well in that case, you definitely want to use yum.  One is not
supposed to run "up2date --nox -u" via cron, but "yum upgrade" works
just as well.  You will get any upgrade to your currently installed
packageset.  The disadvantage -- with Fedora -- is you may get new
versions installed that have only (?!) new features rather than security
updates.


> > You will need to worry a bit more than usual in case up2date picks up
> > a big upgrade that needs human intervention.....
> 
> Can you give an example of this?

Fedora leaves the possibility open that if, say, version 1.x of program
Y has a security problem and version 2.x of the same program is newly
released and doesn't have the security issue, you might get version 2.x
installed via up2date instead of version 1.x+1.  This could cause you to
need to do some reconfiguration.

> > .... just as much human intervention as is required by a standard
> > is-this-going-to-affect-me decision when the "upgrade this rpm RIGHT
> > NOW before you get hacked" situation happens once every six months or
> > so.
> 
> Actually, I'm hoping to *not* have human *decision making* involved when
> the 'upgrade right now' message comes in, it should just be a knee-jerk
> response to run up2date as soon as *any* notice arrives. Which is why I
> would like to have some sort of notice actually arrive. :-)

That would be great.  Sometimes, though, even with security-related
updates someone may have to analyze the repercussions of upgrading that
software.  So even with RHN + up2date as you have it today the trained
monkey *may* need human intervention.  We're discussing probabilities
here, so probably.

> > Bottom line: Fedora will use up2date.  If you expect up2date to be run
> > by a trained monkey, you will have the same amount of issues as if you
> > cron "yum upgrade".
> 
> Showing his ignorance: 
> What is yum? 
> RTFM... RTFM....
> http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/
> Ah, okay. As suspected, an alternative to up2date.

Yes, in the sense that they are both package managers.

> Anyone care to give me a quick-n-dirty sale pitch on why yum would be
> better for me to use than up2date? 

1) up2date's next version uses yum under-the-hood
2) you're allowed to run up2date+yum in an automated fashion (rather
than RHN: https://rhn.redhat.com/help/faq/policy.pxt#268)
3) it's more command-line focused so it's easier to manage many servers.