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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