On 7/20/07, Jon Peatfield <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jul 2007, R P Herrold wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 20 Jul 2007, Troy Dawson wrote:
> >
> >>  Just out of curiosity, since I don't use it, what do you usually set for
> >>  the default number.  In the past, I had it set to 2.  Is that reasonable,
> >>  or would people rather have it higher? like 3 or 4?
> >
> > The centos group have discussed this -- with the pace of kernel updates,
> > particularly near the start of a release of a new Major, it is inprovident to
> > think that end users running yum on a cron autopilot will reboot when new
> > kernels are walked in.
>
> Personally I think that *some* updates should be marked 'reboot needed'
> since carrying on running with the old version means that tools will say
> 'no new updates are needed' but the machine is still running with the
> old/insecure/broken version.
>

The EL5 Gui has support for this and flags updates to glibc,kernel,
and some others as requiring a reboot. However, doing this via a cron
job at 4am means an email or some other such thing to tell a person a
reboot should be done. Which is probably a good idea for the
yum-cronjob program to have in it.



>
> > mkinitrd is fragile enough, and yum's error detection historically
> > insufficiently granular, that I worry that a number of people are going to be
> > going to recovery media ;(
> >
> > Throw in non-stock controller kernel modules, and a trainwreck seems to be on
> > a horizon.
> >
> > Dialling up to say at least 4, if leaving it enabled at all, seems prudent,
> > to let others be the pioneers -- you know - the ones with the arrows sticking
> > out of their backs  ;0.
>
> Or just don't install it on such systems...
>
> Note that installonlyn has been installed and on by default in Fedora-Core
> for quite some time (FC3 I think).  If it broke lots of things it would
> have been very widely reported by now.
>

I have seen some reports in the past. They usually were along the
lines of kernel-headers going away when the kernel didnt (i am sure
this bug got caught). The issue is if the fixes work in 'back-porting'
this to 3.x/4.x (which i think they are), and that the problems listed
above are listed in a man page or something for people who shoot
themselves can be pointed tothe man page on how to pull bullets out of
foot.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"