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On 21.11.2021 05:31, J Leslie Turriff wrote:
I know how to use YaST and zypper to manage my software packages, but the other day I discovered that something called packagekit was also active on my system. (I have disabled it.) How does packagekit relate to YaST and zypper?
PackageKit has zypper plugin that performs actual tasks related to package management on (open)SUSE.
Are they aware of each other?
zypper plugin is based on the same libzypp as zypper and YaST. I do not know what "aware" means for you, but PackageKit and zypper use the same libzypp locking to avoid performing concurrent changes.
Does packagekit have access to my repository list,
Yes.
and does it update things in the background without my knowledge?
PackageKit is daemon that runs in background (usually started on demand) and performs privileged actions (like package installation) on behalf of (usually, unprivileged) clients. It is up to these clients to request update. Software management programs of many desktop environments like KDE or GNOME are based on and call PackageKit. You need to consult documentation of these programs whether they do (or can be configured to) perform installation "without your knowledge". PackageKit also provides command line client and systemd timer/service to perform updates using this client. To my best knowledge these units are disabled by default.
I wonder, because my desktop has been behaving strangely, and a new release of it has been published, to which I have not yet explicitly upgraded.
Leslie -- Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.3 x86_64