firstboot system maintenance task

[Naoki]

One idea, might not work in your case. We have a mirror of the FC tree,
then roll our updates into the core repository and remove older
packages, then run createrepo over it.
Means each new system we build has all the latest packages/updates.  Of
course you can do this to build ISO images as well. Saves time on
running "yum -y update" on everything and downloading all the RPMs
again.  Especially after 3-4 months when the updates tree becomes huge.


On Fri, 2006-03-24 at 11:00 -0800, Florin Andrei wrote:
> After installing Fedora on any system, when the system boots up for the
> first time I always log in as root immediately, in a text-mode console
> (not via X), then run this sequence:
> 
> killall anacron
> yum -y update
> yum clean packages
> anacron -nd
> sync
> reboot
> 
> I just type everything in then I walk away and let the system do it
> since there should be no user interaction. Perhaps a better idea would
> be to run everything inside a typescript session, just to catch all the
> output for further analysis - hmmm, that actually does sound good, I
> should add that to my first boot ritual from now on. :-)
> 
> Anyway, even before Fedora, I was pretty much doing the same thing, but
> translated in Red Hat Linux terms.
> Even before that, 10 years ago when I was using Slackware Linux :-) I
> was doing things that were functionally equivalent, albeit a lot more
> manual and hugely more cumbersome.
> 
> I just think it's a good idea and it's the best and shortest way to
> build a clean and up to date system out of a fresh install.
> 
> So I was thinking - perhaps it, or something equivalent - could be added
> as the last step to firstboot. Perhaps as a popup, informing the user
> that the system will apply all available updates, perform some
> maintenance tasks then reboot, and asking the user to either accept or
> reject it.
> 
> The only snag that I can think of is Internet access - firstboot should
> test HTTP access and perhaps ask the user to configure proxy settings
> first (and skip this whole thing if there seems to be no way to enable
> Internet access at this point).
> Also, perhaps anacron should not even be started the very first time the
> system comes up after install, but instead wait for this maintenance
> task to be either accepted by the user (then the system will reboot and
> anacron will launch normally next time) or rejected (then perhaps
> anacron should be launched by firstboot).
> 
> This might also help a lot of newbies since I noticed that some people
> running Linux for the first time are not aware of the necessity to apply
> updates and patches and do not even know how to do it.
> For the advanced users it would be just a convenient way to bring a
> fresh install up to date before actually pounding on it with real
> workload.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -- 
> Florin Andrei
> 
> http://florin.myip.org/
>