On Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:30:12 +0100, Winnie Lacesso <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >What is the difference between the packages yum-autoupdate and yum-cron? > >rpm -qi yum -cron says "Install this package if you want auto yum updates >nightly via cron." > >rpm -qi yum-autoupdate says "Automatically update your machine daily via >yum." > >The 2 pkgs seem to do the same thing (I just got bit by an automatic >update when I knew yum-cron had not been installed). Apols for not having >time to dig, but do experts know the few-sentence summary of the >differences between these 2 pkgs? Not an expert, but recently had the same question and looked into it a bit. As far as I can see, the main difference is in the way you manage the behaviour of the two packages. yum-cron has an /etc/sysconfig/yum-cron file in which you set variables for whether you want automatic updates or just a list of packages available for update or nothing at all, while cron-autoupdate has separate files, /etc/yum.d/original.yum.cron, /etc/yum.d/checkonly.yum.cron, /etc/yum.d/byhand.yum.cron that you copy or link into /etc/cron.daily to get the behaviour you want. yum-autoupdate also has a /etc/yum.d/yum.cron.excludes file in which you can specify packages that you don't want automatically updated, or reported on. I don't know whether there's a way of getting that effect in yum-cron. yum-cron calls the file it puts in /etc/cron.daily yum-cron, while yum-autoupdate uses yum.cron (hyphen versus dot) so that you can have both packages installed at the same time, although I can't see why anyone would want to. Hope that's helpful.