up2date

[bonnmac]

Is it safe to use up2date with DA? And if so are there certain things you shouldn't update with it? I know with Ensim theres quite a few things you can't. So before I do I thought I'd ask.

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

We do not recommend you run up2date at all. There are many dependancies that may break if you run it and we have have not made a list of these dependancies.

John

[bonnmac]

Thanks John,

That's what I was afraid of. Glad I didn't run it. Maybe a list of dependancies could go on the todo list? :) (I know there are more pressing issues. )

[DirectAdmin Support]

To be honest, we use up2date to install gcc and a few other things when customers forget to install them and we havn't run into trouble with it before. However, thats not to say that running it for other things won't. So, at the momment its just a big "unknown" if it actually will break anything, so from experience, if it works, don't fix it :)

John

[DirectAdmin Support]

Just an update on the previous post:

We now know that up2date WILL break things. So far we have found that it will change some system libraries, which will break things. So far, the only "safe" commands we have used are:

up2date -u gcc
up2date -u flex
up2date -u bision

John

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

I've created a simple little script that modifies the:
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date
file to set the pkgSkipList and removeSkipList lines.

This is just a beta version for making up2date work, but we've run it on our file server and nothing broke.

To install it, follow these steps:
cd /usr/local/directadmin/scripts
wget http://files.directadmin.com/services/up2date.sh
chmod 755 up2date.sh
./up2date.sh
Then you should be able to run:
up2date -u
John

[jlasman]

Would you be willing to create a similar shell script to run apt, which doesn't require a Red Hat membership?

Thanks.

Jeff

[DirectAdmin Support]

I'm not farmiliar with "apt". I'd have to figure out what it's requirements are before implementing such a script....

John

[jlasman]

apt is used by default with debian; it appears to be the best way to do updating...

It has been ported to RHL; I'll send you the info in an email.

We like it a lot better; easier to set up, easier to implement, run it automatically and not worry about memberships or notifications, etc.

We run it nightly on a bunch of Plesk systems; it's never broken anything.

(My understanding is it only upgrades like-named RPMs where only the "dash" numbers have changed.)

Jeff