On Sunday 06 November 2005 2:04 pm, Joachim Schrod wrote:
The situation: I have installed packages both from the SUSE DVD and from other sources. I get automated update management support for the SUSE packages by online_update. I don't get it for the other sources, but I want it for these packages as well. I.e., when there are updates for Packman or usr-local-bin or Guru packages, I want to get notified and want to be able to install them with one command.
Me too. Bring the non-SUSE packages up to the same delta and patch level capabilities that SUSE provides would be consistent and easier on bandwidth. This hasn't been happening and I haven't seen or heard of any plans to do that for the non-SUSE packages and repositories. I'd even settle for the same brief explanation of what has changed and why for those non-SUSE packages just like what YOU provides in it's security updates. If that could be incorporated into apt/smart it would be a huge step forward.
I also want to do that for a whole set of computers, and not just for one. Since I pay for my traffic by volume, downloads shall happen only once. Patch rpms should be supported, if possible, for the same reason.
Setting up a local YOU patch repository is documented. Also setting up a local apt server is possible.
As James Ogley pointed out already, this is not possible with online_update. (Since James is the maintainer of usr-local-bin, I trust him fully on that answer. :-)
This means I will have to decide if I go with apt or with smart. -- apt has the advantage that I know it from Debian. But I have not seen apticron up to now, which I use for Debian systems. So it might not be as convenient, I might need to put some work in it. -- smart has the advantage that SUSE seems to be going down that road. So it's a better investment of time for the long term.
As I get to know smart I am liking it more and more. It brings dependency checking to new levels. It hasn't eliminated all of my problems between the keyboard and chair but its helping quite a lot.
I wanted to postpone that decision and use online_update in the mean time; but I think that's not possible and I have to decide it now.
YOU (YaST Online Update) only applies to SUSE supplied packages that have security fixes and once in a great while major updates i.e. from OpenOffice.org beta 2 to the released version 2 when it became available. For non-SUSE packages we are on our own to manually run apt/smart/whatever and check for updates. We aren't told via apt/smart why these packages are updated: that is a manual exercise to go find out from package maintainers, blogs, websites, etc.
Cheers, Joachim
Stan