On 13 January 2016 at 12:55, Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 10:51:26AM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote:
>>
>> As I understand it, one of the key values of SL is that it allows you to
>> stay on a point release and obtain only security fixes for your packages
>> (someone else mentioned this, too). This is important when running
>> scientific experiments where you can't allow changes in software to
>> impact your research results. Unless something has changed, neither
>> CentOS nor the North American Upstream Vendor provide this service. This
>> feature from Scientific Linux is a valuable one if you need it.
>>
>
>
> Something strange happened during the move from el6 to el7 -
>
> CERN Linux el6 was always automatically self-updating to latest point release,
> without causing any problems, so I came to like that and now configure SL6 machines
> to automatically update (using the SL6x repo).
>
> Now CERN Linux el7 comes in and I see the machines installed as 7.1 stay there,
> no automatic update to 7.2. Odd.
>
> Then here, I see same with CentOS7 - no automatic updates by default, no automatic
> updates to latest point release, 7.1 machines stay at 7.1. (I do not have any SL7 to compare)
>
> So I am puzzled by all this. Maybe I should ask google: "is centos7 supposed to self update to latest point release?"
>

I don't know what CERN is doing but CentOS is always on the latest.
From other things you list before I don't know what is causing your
problems without rpm -qf and similar things to know what files etc you
are talking about.


>
> Then I takes quite a bit of work to get automatic updates to work at all on CentOS7
> (CERN el7 seems to be okey):
>
> a) The yum.cron package is crazy - each time I need to use yum, I have to wait
> until it finishes some useless background tasks. Then "yum remove yum.cron" has
> no effect because all the cron jobs are part of the main yum package. Go figure.
>

Hmmm. I don't see this with my current system but I don't know what
file you are talking about.

> b) the CERN yum-autoupdate package, which we use for SL6 updates, depends
> on a yum plugin not available anywhere (except from a CERN repo) and then actually
> does not work out of the box because of strange interaction with systemd - only works after a reboot.
>
> bb) then it does not send any email about updates - the el6 yum-autoupdate did this,
> where did this function go?!?
>
> (Hmm... maybe I should try these auto update scripts from the SL7 repository?)
>
>
> So as they say, 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
>
>
> --
> 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



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.