explanation of yum.cron + a little frustration.

[Paul Howarth]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Erik Hemdal wrote:
>>If anyone has a suggestion, or better, an example, for how you could
>>profitably modify yum-daily.yum, I would be grateful to see it.
> 
> 
> I am a great fan of yum -
> it is probably the main reason I run Fedora -
> but I agree with those who say that yum.cron is excessively complicated.
> 
> A simple entry in /etc/yum.daily/ would have been preferable, in my view.

The yum entry *is* a sinple entry in /etc/cron.daily; the yum "service" 
simply provides a convenient and easy way to enable or disable it.

> I think the "service" mechanism should be reserved for daemons.

The yum cron job is running from the cron daemon; if it was a separate 
daemon, it would be sitting there all the time, taking up resources, 
waiting for its time of the day to run. Running from cron is much more 
efficient.

> While the additional complication in this case is not too bad,
> it is very important, IMHO, 
> to keep Linux administration as simple and consistent as possible.
> 
> I don't see any reason to treat yum any differently
> from the other entries in /etc/cron.daily , like logrotate and tetex.

Neither of these provide a convenient way to disable/reenable the cron 
job whilst retaining all other functionality. Many people don't want yum 
to run from cron but do want to retain yum functionality for manual 
operations. I really don't see a problem with the way this works

Paul.