Fedora Core brevity vs server upgrades

[John Summerfied]

Pedro Fernandes Macedo wrote:

>>
>> I'm not a fan on Yum.
>>
> It's not a yum related problem. If the server is incomplete , it means 
> that apt , yum and any other other app that does something like yum/apt 
> do , they'll have issues with broken mirrors.
> There's no easy way to fix this. If you find one , please post it , 

Drop unreliable mirrors. It happens often enough that they should be 
identifiable.

Update lists mirrors; it seems that Yum downloads a fresh list each time 
(yuck, I'd rather see the list in an rpm that's updated as needed), so 
that should be a quick fix. Once a mirror fixes its problems, relist it.

> since keeping several mirrors in synch is certainly something very 
> difficult, specially when you dont have control over them.
> 
>>> I think most are usability improvements for the desktop, and probably
>>> not really needed on servers.
>>
>>
>>
>> I note that there have been several kernel updates, and that he latest 
>> is broken (on my laptop it doesn't shut down, gets an oops instead). 
>> Not good for transporting.
>>
> For a good description of the updates , subscribe to 
> fedora-announce-list. Usually the security updates are listed with the 
> [SECURITY] tag in the subject , but sometimes a security update goes by 
> without any special mention besides the entry in the changelog saying 
> something like "Fixed CAN #.... ".

I'm on the list, what am I supposed to see? I didn't ask _why_ there 
have been several kernel updates, I merely observed there have been several.



> 
>>
>>>> I'd not like such a volatile selection of software on my server, I'd 
>>>> be perpetually worried that something will break, and if a server 
>>>> breaks then the whole enterprise (school in my case) is affected.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, for example there was a recent util-linux update that
>>> "broke" (though there was a workaround that could be used) client-side
>>> NFS mounts to older servers, though an updated update was released the
>>> day after.
>>
>>
>>
>> This justifies my hands-on update policy.
>>
>> The option to log software updates would be good - email (preferably 
>> to another box) and a printed report are good options.
> 
> 
> Then the approach you need is something different: configure your 
> machines to download from a local mirror. And only put in that mirror 
> the packages that you have already tested on your network.

I've not noticed that Yum can be configured to do that. I can make it 
update but not download, but I don't think it can download and not update.

up2date can do that, and that's what I did with Taroon beta.



-- 

Cheers
John

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