On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 10:30:12AM +0100, Winnie Lacesso wrote:
> 
> What is the difference between the packages yum-autoupdate and yum-cron?
> 


In the SL/SLC 5/6 world there are 3 nightly update scripts:

yum.cron - is now part of the yum package (so count it as "standard", file bugs at bugzilla.redhat.com)
yum-autoupdate-2 - comes with SL (written by Troy?) (complain to this list)
yum-autoupdate-4 - comes with SLC (written at CERN?) (complain to CERN)

I have all 3 in use (plus some variations on SL4 and older SL5 machines).

I can report that all these packages are defective in different ways. (the CERN version is the least broken).

The main complaints:

1) the email reports say "YUM:hostname" regardless of success or failure
   (I have to add a 2-liner to the script to say "YUM:ERROR:hostname" if the update failed).

2) if some junk package has errors, critical security updates are not installed (yum -skip-broken
   is broken, does not do squat against most breakage)

3) if some junk yum repository has an error, critical security updates are not installed

4) it is hard to enable/disable automatic update of kernels and kernel modules. (I think the latest
   SL6 yum-autoupdate-2 ships with kernel updates completely disabled, and critical security
   updates are not installed). (I would prefer to control this via chkconfig).

(Items 2 and 3 are really yum problems, but that's what scripts are for - for working around yum bugs!)


-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada