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.
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Cheers John
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