what has 'yum update' done?

[Matthew Miller]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 03:34:18PM +0200, lee wrote:
> The package management tools in Debian send you emails about changes
> like that, even about very little changes, when packages are being
> replaced by more recent versions.  Maybe this could be done in Fedora as
> well?

You could try using yum-cron. Or, if you're interested in hacking a little
bit, you could adapt
ftp://linst.bu.edu/updates/monde/SRPMS/bulinux-autoupdate-1.1.8-bu50.7.src.rpm
which I made for Boston University Linux back in the day. It would be kind
of cool to see it made more generic (and possibly integrated with yum-cron).
It's designed to give a sysadmin-friendly e-mail report of all packages
updates.

[The rest of the stuff in your post I don't know about, so I'll let someone
else respond.]

-- 
Matthew Miller  ☁☁☁  Fedora Cloud Architect  ☁☁☁  <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>