up2date -- advice sought

[Jim Cornette]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

>I am running Fedora on a number of computers.
>To date I have "up2date"d each of them separately,
>but this obviously involves download duplication.
>
>So this time I gave the command
>up2date -d --tmpdir=/opt/Fedora
>(a directory I had created).
>
>(1) Now I have the downloaded files in /tmp/Fedora .
>I know I could just run say "rpm -Uvh *.rpm" in that directory.
>But is this the correct thing to do?
>
>  
>
 From my understanding, the -Uvh would install all rpms within the 
directory. I think that -Fvh will only install newer versions of 
programs that are already installed on the machine. (Freshen verses upgrade)

>(2) I'm not clear if up2date keeps a record of downloaded RPMs
>other than the list in /var/log/rpmpkgs*.
>Can installing packages "by hand", ie by rpm,
>cause any confusion?
>  
>
To my understanding, there is only the one location for information. (no 
duplicated efforts)

>(3) Do the files in /opt/Fedora represent a valid "repository"?
>If so, what entry do I add to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources
>to make up2date look in /opt/Fedora ?
>Also. if this entry appears first,
>will up2date look there,
>and then look at the "standard" entries, eg
>==============================
>yum updates-released 
>http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/1/i386/
>==============================
>  
>

There is an entry way down on the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file that 
allows you to enter a local directory that up2date will use. I used it 
and it works pretty decent.

>Any suggestions or advice gratefully received.
>
>--
>Timothy Murphy  
>e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
>tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
>s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
>  
>

Hopefully this helps a bit.

Jim