"yum update" with most of the rpms already on a USB key?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Mike Cloaked wrote:

>
>
>
> Robert P. J. Day-2 wrote:
> >
> >   so, just so i don't misunderstand, i want to do a *full* system
> > update, but i want to specify a local directory to check *first*
> > for any necessary rpm files before venturing online, in order to
> > minimize downloading.  is that what's going to happen here?
> > thanks.
>
> One option is to plug in your usbkey, and then rsync or cp the rpms over to
> /var/cache/yum....  on the system you are about to update.  Then yum -y
> update will update the full system, and only download any additional rpms
> into /var/cache/yum/ that it needs over and above those you copied in from
> the key.

  i thought of that and was fairly sure it would work, but that
approach has two issues:

1) i wasn't *absolutely* sure that yum doesn't squirrel away any
accompanying meta-info as it's populating /var/cache/yum so i was a
little nervous about just dumping a pile of extra rpms in there which
yum itself didn't stash there.

2) on some systems, /var might be a separate filesystem and just isn't
capable of handling 1 or 2 Gig of packages tossed into it.  (yes,
yes, symlinks, i know. :-)

hence wanting to specify an additional local repository to be used
in conjunction with the standard online one.  i'm still a little
nervous about the earlier suggestion of:

  # yum localupdate /location/of/updates/*.rpm

in my mind, specifying an explicit list of rpms to "update" always
makes me think that it should be trying to update *exactly* that set
of packages.  that's not what i want -- i want a full system update
for which i can identify a convenient local directory that can contain
any useful *subset* of packages that don't need to be downloaded.
sort of:

  # yum update --look_here_first <local_dir_name_full_of_rpms>

is that what that "localupdate" incantation is going to do?  and if
so, isn't there an appropriate option to specify just the directory,
rather than having to wildcard the entire set of rpm file names in
that directory?

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry:
    Have classroom, will lecture.

http://crashcourse.ca                          Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
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