How To Force Yum To Update

[Robert L Cochran]

Thomas Springer wrote:

>Am Sonntag, den 22.01.2006, 16:31 -0800 schrieb jdow:
>  
>
>>>>>Each time I ran 'yum update' I 
>>>>>would get responses very similar to this:
>>>>>
>>>>>[...]
>>>>>Reading repository metadata in from local files
>>>>>primary.xml.gz            100% |=========================| 969 kB    
>>>>>00:34
>>>>>extras    : ################################################## 2815/2815
>>>>>Added 15 new packages, deleted 12 old in 3.45 seconds
>>>>>No Packages marked for Update/Obsoletion
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>Observe that above. If there are only 15 new packages and 12 deleted
>>packages something is doing updates behind your back. Please check it
>>out rather than "presume" she needs an update.
>>
>>    
>>

The output shown above is an example taken from my personal machine, and 
not the machine I wish to update. I snipped a lot of the yum output away 
because it wasn't zeroing in on what I want to discuss. I only showed 
enough to give a context. I showed this example to illustrate what I'm 
talking about, and not at all as output from the machine of interest.

>>>>>I know she needs an openoffice update. I don't think yum is running 
>>>>>nightly, but I didn't check for that either, so I could be wrong.
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>
>See the output of:
>% /sbin/service yum status
>(e.g.) "Nightly yum update is enabled."
>
>You might want to instruct your mother-in-law to do that for *you*.
>
>  
>
With this particular person, I really can't do that. The machine is only 
turned on once every few days at best and it is behind a private network.

By default, the yum service in FC4 is turned off. You have to turn it on 
with chkconfig or ntsysv. I checked /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron and it 
checks for the yum service; if it is running, the cron job executes.

The user of the machine of interest most assuredly does not have the 
skill to alter a cron job.

I know there are updates out there that the machine needs. They were 
available since January 17 per fedora-announce-list and the last time I 
was able to physically sit at the machine and work it was January 21.

As a matter of interest, I was only able to get the openoffice update 
needed for my own personal machine on January 20. Here's the yum log:

Jan 20 19:46:35 Updated: openoffice.org-core.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
[...]

The question remains: how can I force yum to update when known updates 
(per fedora-announce-list) are available?

Bob