dnf update vs Software Udpates

[Ron Yorston]

Suvayu Ali wrote:
>That said, I sometimes do not understand what's the harm in getting
>updates few hours later.  dnf already tells you how old the metadata is
>when it starts, you can choose to get the latest metadata if it is too
>old.  So what's the big deal?

I certainly get the impression that dnf tells me about updates less
frequently than yum did.  It also seems to pull in metadata less
frequently.

In fedora-updates.repo I have:  metadata_expire=6h.  I also have the
dnf-makecache.timer 'masked'.

It's more than 6 hours since I last ran dnf but:

[root at vulcan rmyf22]# dnf check-update
Fedora 22 - x86_64 - RMY repository             131 kB/s | 6.0 kB     00:00    
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:00:00 ago on Wed Jul 22 08:38:32 2015.
[root at vulcan rmyf22]#

No updates.  It pulled in metadata for my private repo but not
fedora-updates.  So is it really telling me "how old the metadata is"?
The message just refers to the last time an expiration check was
performed.  Does that mean the metadata was up to date as of 0:00:00 ago?
Because, as we shall see, it clearly wasn't.

Let's try the --refresh option:

[root at vulcan rmyf22]# dnf --refresh check-update
Fedora 22 - x86_64 - RMY repository             113 kB/s | 6.0 kB     00:00    
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:00:00 ago on Wed Jul 22 08:39:01 2015.
[root at vulcan rmyf22]#

Still no updates.  Time for a bigger hammer (don't try this at home or
offer it as advice to newbies):

[root at vulcan rmyf22]# rm -rf /var/cache/dnf/x86_64/22/updates*
[root at vulcan rmyf22]# dnf check-update
Fedora 22 - x86_64 - Updates                    774 kB/s |  12 MB     00:16    
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:00:16 ago on Wed Jul 22 08:40:02 2015.

environment-modules.x86_64                 3.2.10-16.fc22                updates
...

Plus 55 other updates.  What's going on?

Ron