Fedora Core brevity vs server upgrades

[John Summerfied]

Paul Howarth wrote:

>>apt-get works well and I run it nightly in a cron job to download from a 
>>local mirror. It's easy to configure apt-get to use a particular mirror, 
>>and the initial configuration is done at install time.
>>
>>I've not discovered a good way to make yum download "hands off." I 
>>_could_ make it download and install, but that's not my style. I like to 
>>control when updates go in.
>>
>>By default, yum uses a selection of mirrors in convenient locations such 
>>as .fi. .il and goodness knows where else. I'm in Australia, and there 
>>are few locations further away than those.
> 
> 
> It's very easy to make yum use a local mirror. I do this both at home at
> at work. Just point each repo at your local mirror using the "baseurl"
> directive in your yum repository configuration instead of using the
> default mirrorlist.

It may be "very easy" but only when you know how. I've installed a few 
Debian systems, and it's impossible to avoid the opportunity to choose a 
local mirror.

First, it asks "What country..."  and that promptly weeds out .fi, .il, 
.ru and .mx.

In contrast, nothing in FC asked me what to use, and I've not seen any 
documentation on the topic. Nor, it happens, do I know a near-by mirror.

It seems some of the mirrors used by Yum are beorkn - I often get 404 
errors.

I'm not a fan on Yum.


> 
> 
>>I see an enormous volume of updates for FC. I've not checked on what 
>>they fix, but I suspect they're mostly not security-related.
> 
> 
> I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
> not really needed on servers.

I note that there have been several kernel updates, and that he latest 
is broken (on my laptop it doesn't shut down, gets an oops instead). Not 
good for transporting.


> 
> 
>>I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd be 
>>perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server breaks 
>>then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.
> 
> 
> Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
> "broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
> NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
> day after.

This justifies my hands-on update policy.

The option to log software updates would be good - email (preferably to 
another box) and a printed report are good options.


-- 

Cheers
John

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