yum autoupdate, yum autoupdate not working in 6.2

[dmongan]

Yum autoupdates by default just fine on my Scientific Linux 5.X systems but not on my 6.X systems.
What do I have to do to get yum to autoupdate patches on Scientific Linux 6.2?

[AndrewSerk]

Hi dmongan and welcome to SLF,

If you are using gnome and want auto-updates go System > Preferences > Software Updates . You will get the Software Update Preferences window up. In that window choose how often you want to check for updates and What updates you want to automatically install.

Hope this helps,

[dmongan]

OK, thanks, now I just need to find out what config. file was changed so I can duplicate it my kickstarts.

[dmongan]

After further review, according to the help page for the GUI, this is only effective for the current user logged in. Seems like there should be a system wide setting. The default yum configuration settings looks like they should work as is, but something is overriding them.

[AndrewSerk]

Hello,

I believe the file you are looking for is "/etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate" but this is untested by me.

Hope this helps,



This post has been edited by AndrewSerk: Jul 6 2012, 07:07 PM

[AndrewSerk]

After looking a little closer, you may be able to set auto_update with gconftool-2 and the key "/schemas/apps/gnome-packagekit/update-icon/auto_update" but I will not have time to do testing for this today but will have a look tomorrow unless you post that you have got it.

[log69]

QUOTE (AndrewSerk @ Jul 6 2012, 03:48 PM)

Hi dmongan and welcome to SLF, If you are using gnome and want auto-updates go System > Preferences > Software Updates . You will get the Software Update Preferences window up. In that window choose how often you want to check for updates and  What updates you want to automatically install. Hope this helps,

I wonder how you could achieve that for a server without GUI? I see no option in /etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate to enable automatic installation of updates.

[tux99]

QUOTE (log69 @ Jul 6 2012, 11:08 PM)

I wonder how you could achieve that for a server without GUI? I see no option in /etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate to enable automatic installation of updates.

AFAIK, autoupdate is installed and enabled by default on SL. and there is no need for Gnome, it works out of the box on all my SL servers that are all minimal server installs without X.

[log69]

QUOTE (tux99 @ Jul 6 2012, 10:58 PM)

QUOTE (log69 @ Jul 6 2012, 11:08 PM) I wonder how you could achieve that for a server without GUI? I see no option in /etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate to enable automatic installation of updates. AFAIK, autoupdate is installed and enabled by default on SL. and there is no need for Gnome, it works out of the box on all my SL servers that are all minimal server installs without X.

That's weird. Several of my server I installed with minimal config without GUI, and whenever I ran a "yum update" occasionally, there were updates to install. So I created a cronjob with "yum update -y". What am I missing here?

BTW I have the files and package installed:

CODE

$ locate yum | grep update | grep etc /etc/cron.daily/yum-autoupdate /etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate

[tux99]

/etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate contains ENABLED="true" by default (at least on my installs) but it also contains EXCLUDE="kernel* openafs* *-kmdl-* kmod-* *firmware*" so yum-autoupdate will update automatically everything apart from kernel and openafs related packages.

Also since yum-autoupdate is scheduled to run once a day, you might see new updates if you run 'yum update' manually in between and those updates were released after the last daily yum-autoupdate run.

[log69]

QUOTE (tux99 @ Jul 7 2012, 01:37 PM)

/etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate contains ENABLED="true" by default (at least on my installs) but it  also contains EXCLUDE="kernel* openafs* *-kmdl-* kmod-* *firmware*" so yum-autoupdate will update automatically everything apart from kernel and openafs related packages. Also since yum-autoupdate is scheduled to run once a day, you might see new updates if you run 'yum update' manually in between and those updates were released after the last daily yum-autoupdate run.

Thanks for your help!

[dmongan]

Thanks for the replies...

I found that yum-autoupdate would error out because of duplicate rpms that got installed when I used yum to install vlc.

I added the following line to /etc/yum.conf.... seems to work now.

skip_broken=1

[AndrewSerk]

Glad you got it worked out.

Shouldn't the line read "skip-broken=1" tho'?

This post has been edited by AndrewSerk: Jul 11 2012, 06:08 PM

[avison48]

A related question: 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?

[dgwsoft]

QUOTE (AndrewSerk @ Jul 6 2012, 06:48 PM)

Hello, I believe the file you are looking for is "/etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate" but this is untested by me. Hope this helps,

Thanks for the info, Andrew. I have the opposite problem. Despite the fact that "Software Update Preferences" is set to "Automatically install: Nothing". I have just noticed that something has been sneakily updating my system without my knowledge. I can see this from "yum history".

I noticed this when my OpenOffice installation was replaced by LibreOffice overnight - while I had several OpenOffice documents open!

Am I alone in considering this to be SERIOUSLY unfriendly behaviour?

I uninstalled LibreOffice and installed OpenOffice for a reason - namely that I have a lot of documents and templates written in OpenOffice, and in LibreOffice the fonts look rubbish. I then explicitly turned off automatic install (or thought I had).

I have now edited "/etc/sysconfig/yum-autoupdate", but I think I will wait until tomorrow to check that has worked before I spend time re-installing my preferred apps.

I can see there may be a conflict here between the gnome settings and the system settings, but unless this can be resolved, one or the other should be removed. And surely the default behaviour should be NEVER to change a system without explicit permission?

To me, overriding the users choice of apps without so much a by-your-leave is the antithesis of what open source software is supposed to be about. Or am I just being old-fashioned?

cheers

Gareth

[redman]

QUOTE (dgwsoft @ Aug 4 2012, 02:38 PM)

Am I alone in considering this to be SERIOUSLY unfriendly behaviour?

Red Hat has made the switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice when they released RHEL6.3.
I was under the assumption that SL6.3 would do the same.

BUT it seems that SL has already pushed LibreOffice to SL6.2. When you update your system (either by hand when removing yum-autouodate or automatically through yum-autoupdate) you will ALREADY make the switch from OpenOffice to Libreoffice!!!!

I agree this should have been announced (probably done through the SL mailinglist) better before putting the files up for updates....

To inform others I have put up a "warning" sign on the forum: link.