How do I enable nightly yum?

[John Summerfied]

Erin D. Hughes wrote:
> John Summerfied wrote:
> 
>> Rick Stevens wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>> I would have thought a daily (or rather nightly) cron job
>>>> running "yum -y update" would be what most people would want,
>>>> at least on a desktop.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, that's one way.  Don't forget to do "yum -y update >/dev/null 2>&1"
>>> unless you want mail sent to root everytime it runs.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think running yum to automatically update your is a particularly 
>> effective way of getting your system screwed without you knowing why,
>>
>> Diverting all the output to /dev/null compounds the problem because it 
>> discards some of the evidence.
>>
>> How likely is it that a particular update is broken?
>>     Quite low, but not impossible.
>> How likely is it that there will be a serious problem with an updated?
>>     Almost certain.
>>
>> There has been a recent kernel update providing a kernel that does not 
>> work on some systems. On mine, it would not shut down cleanly so I was 
>> forced to cycle power (no reset button) to reboot. Others had problems 
>> booting. Worse, the new-kernel policy is the latest-installed is the 
>> default.
>>
>> glibc and rpm both have the ability to bork the entire system.
>>
>> I have no problem with running a tool to download updates regularly, 
>> but I _will not_ apply them automatically. I do it manually so that 
>> then I know something's changed.
>>
>> up2date has the ability to download and _not_ apply updates: I did 
>> that on taroon beta.
>> apt-get has the ability to download and _not_ apply updates. I do that 
>> on my several Debian systems.
>>
>> yum has not this ability and so IMV is ill-suited to the task of 
>> maintaining one's software where automation is desired.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> John,
> 
> I agree 50% with you but,  I have to say that I like > love automation 
> it gives me time to solve other problems.
> 
> That said line 3 in your yum.conf would show you something like
> logfile=/var/log/yum.log
> 
> in there we see stuff like
> 04/14/05 00:09:25 Dep Installed: tcl 8.4.5-7.i386
> 04/14/05 00:09:25 Dep Installed: postgresql 7.4.7-3.FC2.1.i386
> 04/14/05 00:09:25 Updated: postgresql-docs 7.4.7-3.FC2.1.i386
> 04/15/05 00:45:58 Updated: postgresql-jdbc 7.4.7-3.FC2.1.i386
> 04/19/05 20:17:07 Erased: mod_python 3.1.3-1.fc2.2.i386
> 05/07/05 09:23:23 Erased: mailman 3:2.1.5-10.fc2.i386
> 05/07/05 09:24:36 Updated: clamav-milter 81:0.84-1.i386
> 05/07/05 09:24:36 Updated: clamav-devel 81:0.84-1.i386
> 05/07/05 09:24:36 Updated: clamav 81:0.84-1.i386
> 
> Just enough to give you information on what the problem might be..... 
> that mixed with a quick look at messages log or the system log .... ya 
> your about 3 minutes away from goggling the answer to your problems.
> 
> Also you can comment out if you do not wish to do kernel upgrades or 
> anything else, yum is a little more flexible in that. Sans your download 
> argument.

When I update my Debian boxes, I am told what-s being changed, so I have 
the opportunity to actually know and remember.

If I update my FC boxes with yum, I must either do it all manually or 
all automatically. If the latter, I cannot know until after the event 
and it's something that can too easily escape attention. Potentially, mt 
systen could reboot after updating, before I can see the results (say 
there's a power outage - some places round Perth have been powerless for 
days just now and that's sure to test anyone's UPS and it boots into a 
duff kernel or glibc's broken.

And  I didn't change anything Guv.

There are enough FC (and RHEL) boxes around that that will happen to 
someone sometime.

Downloading automatically: good time saver.
Updating automatically: invitation to Ill Fortune.




-- 

Cheers
John

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