[K12OSN] Heads up: CentOS 5.1 released

[Les Mikesell]

Rob Owens wrote:

>>> If you run "yum update" on a CentOS 5.0/K12LTSP EL5 box, you'll be in
>>> for quite a download.
>>>
>>> You can read up on the changes here:
>>>
>>>     http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.1/
>>>
>>>
>>> I'll get to work on building ISOs for those who do a fresh install &
>>> don't want to have to download that many packages afterwards ;-)
>> If you like to baby-sit the update process but don't want to wait while
>> the download completes you can:
>>
>> yum -y install yum-downloadonly
>>    This installs a yum plugin to permit:
>> yum -y --downloadonly update
>>    This downloads the needed new RPM packages but doesn't install them.
>>    You can repeat this if there are problems downloading.
>>
>>    Then when you are ready for the actual update:
>> yum -y update
>>    This part runs fairly quickly with all the packages already
>> available  - and you'll need a reboot when it finishes to load the new
>> kernel.
>>
> 
> Is there any good reason to update the kernel if everything is working
> fine for me right now?  I've got 160 days of uptime since I plugged my
> server into a new UPS, and I'd like to see how far I can take it...  But
> that's just for bragging rights, so if there's a good reason to use the
> new kernel, someone let me know and I'll upgrade it.

I'm not sure there is any pressing need to do this update at all, but 
when an update installs a new kernel and sets it as the default, I 
usually like to reboot the machine at a time I can go to the console and 
select the old one if there is a problem.  Otherwise there's a rare 
chance that some change won't work on your specific hardware and it 
won't come up after you lose power in the middle of the night and no one 
is around.  This is more common on fedora, though - Centos is pretty 
well tested before anything is releases.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com