On Thursday 13 July 2006 14:43, Stephen Boddy wrote:
On Thursday 13 July 2006 12:28, Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Thursday 2006-07-13 at 10:22 +0100, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
It seems like this would be a sensible addition to SUSE for those of us with multiple machines, (applying to virtual ones too.)
I agree entirely. I think it's weird that something like this, which would be really handy in a small office setup, for instance, is not a YaST module - it's almost as if people are assuming that you will either have a lonely Linux server on you LAN, or an enterprise-level 800-desk setup, but nothing in between.
Me too
If you are using Smart, one thing you could do is set it not to remove packages after download: smart config --set remove-packages=false and then share that PC's /var/lib/smart/packages over NFS. Then, on the other PCs, symlink their /var/lib/smart/packages dirs to that NFS share. Everything downloaded by any PC will then be in the source PC's /var/lib/smart/packages dir, and any package slated for update on a PC will be fetched from there if it exists, rather than being downloaded.
That reminds me. Previously, in 9.3, all updates were locally stored in "/var/lib/YaST2/you/mnt/i386/update/9.3", but in 10.1 I can't find where they are, that directory tree no longer exists.
Where are patches stored now?
The trick you mention for smart should be possible with yast, too.
That may work, but has some problems. The folder would have to be writable for all machines accessing, or it won't work. As a result, any machine that is misconfigured will erase the "cache".
As to the location, with the changes in 10.1 it's anyones guess to where they are now. It also assumes that libzypp et al have a similar seperate cached directory of downloaded rpms, and that multiple machines accessing it won't cause the machines to trip over each other.
As for smart, once I have a distribution with package management, I'm very reluctant to use a system not delivered through that distro. i.e. is smart just another "perspective" on the same files supplied by SuSE? Who updates the "perspective", and is it done in a timely fashion?
I did come across this page/site though. http://minkirri.apana.org.au/~abo/projects/ It is /exactly/ the principle I'm thinking of, but it appears to be a bit out of date, and possibly incomplete. I haven't downloaded it and checked it out yet. He has some sort of python based VFS (osVFS), and a mirror program (mirrord) that do this. Probably worth a look, and some of my time if it works. I'm comfortable with Python so I should be able to get it working ;-) --
OK, I'm going to eat my words, and do a public turnaround. I've tried smart, and I'm very impressed. It's fast and clever. I had some conflicts on my main system (10.0) which were all over the place. 4+ packages with conflicts and recommendations to delete another dozen or so. I ran "smart fix" and it just repaired it with fewer, different removals. And it possibly didn't need to remove all of those, as I was still grokking the interface, and hadn't enabled all the repositories yet. Also on the plus side is that the tray icon is more intuitive that the green gecko. Not a problem for me, but it would be for some of the people I set up for. Love the parallel/mirrored downloads. It saturated my broadband at a constant 240 KB/s or so, as opposed to YaST limping along pulling one file at a time, and installing it before doanloading the next file, all from a single mirror. The only downsides I've discovered are: - The lack of "patch-sets", which is not a problem for my home systems, but might be in a business setting. - The gtk gui seems rather flaky. More than a couple of minutes usage accessing varied functions tends to make it go unstable and crash, and sometimes either the download or install seems to freeze up. - The gtk download gui at full screen hogs the CPU a bit. (Not sure if that's Python, GTK, X or display drivers at fault.) Even with the downsides, as soon as I'd finished with that system I went and installed on the 10.1 laptop I have. Smart forever!!!! I know Python, so I might even be able to help out with minor fixes, although having looked at the code already, it takes a little effort to get your bearings. -- Steve Boddy -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com