Re: Comparing update systems

Günther Schwarz wrote:
Not sure about acrobate reader with the update. The kernel indeed not.
I am confused as to what you want exactly. You run cron-tab at certain
times (say at night) and then what happens?

It checks for updates at the repositories, downloads and installs them.
There is no magic involved. It just works nicer than the tools I have
at hand with SuSE.

1) it is openSUSE or if you run SLE it is SUSE.
2) I am completely baffeld with the fact that the two things do the same
in the background and still you [prefere one over the other

I looked a bit at the source and it is basicaly just a script that
runs apt-get if I am not mistaken. Just like you can make a script
that does about the same for zypper with very little effort.

Well, the difference is that cron-apt is available in the first place.
So I do not have any work to do myself other than a little
configuration.

From what you seem to want to be doing, configuring the updates via YaST
should be all that you need.

It would be nice this way. But your example is with 11.0 obviously. The
10.3 systems here won't be retired until 2009, and I have to find a
solution for this. Otherwise they do run nicely, so I have no intention
to go to kernel 2.6.25 anytime soon. It is either parsing the nasty
output to a readable form or switching to smart like I already did with
10.2 where zypper has proven to be plain horror. I would like to stay
with the default updater, so I'm working now on the parsing problem.

I agree with you on the output. Perhaps if somebody files a bugreport,
they repair it. It might be worth a try.

As I said there is nothing special about it: it simply works without
annoying bugs and is easy to configure. That makes it superior to a
tool that is still buggy and harder to work with. But I'm repeating
myself here.

Apart from the email that looks like ***, I do not see where the tool
is buggy. So we must have a different opinion there. I use the automated
updates since 5.4 or so and I have never seen anything that I would call
'buggy'.

I am sorry, I fail to see where is does anything that would relate to
a networked enviroment.

Think of a small system with several servers and PCs which share big
parts of their configuration. Maintenance work has to be restricted to
the absolute minimum possible without compromising security and
availability. Automatic updates are vital for such a system as is a
configuration tool like cfengine.

I understand what a network is. I fail to see what extra cron-apt brings
to the table that does things specificaly for a network enviroment.

How would you do this in a openSUSE network enviroment (non SLE, but
openSUSE)? 1) Have one machine fetch the updates for all the versions of
openSUSE, SUSE and SuSE and even S.u.S.E. you are running. (Might need
to make some updates yourself for certain systems)
2) Have each machine do the automatic update (either with YOU or with
sypper) point to your server.
3) Done

You might think that part 2 is very difficult, but it isn't. If there
are not to many machines, you can do it during instalation. Takes about
30 seconds.

If there are many machines you might need to write a small script that
you need to run once from each machine (wget server/script.sh && sh
script sh) for already installed machines.

If you need to install many machines, you install once, configure it,
save that configuration and open it with each instalation. This will
give you similar systems even on non-similar hardware.

If you need to install a shitlead amount of machines, you make your own
instalation disk where you have in the beginning e.g. a selection
between student, teacher, server, portable and on each machine you just
click once on your selection and go to the next.

There are many options possible depending on the amount that are already
installed, amount of types and who is doing the instalation and how
different you want them to be.

That part about the GUI is bull and you know it.

No, it is not ;-) The default installation results in a GUI updater that
pops up a window if updates are available while the CLI tool for
automatic updates is buggy (which might have been fixed in the most
recent release).

I have never seen that. Also I know that they do some work on it, but
you make it sound as if that is all they care about and that is theb
bull part.

It has, as time spent on making a system user-friendly for the isolated
desktop easily results in time missing for development and testing of
tools and procedures to do remote administration. This is basically
what I'm complaining about.

And again I ask you what the cron-apt tool does specificaly network
related, meaning a network of computers. It must be there as you keep
saying, so I must be overlooking it.

So this is good, right?

This is interesting if a company wants to write software for mixed
environments. But it is also challenging and might result in more
complex software with questionable benefits.

Almost all networks are in a mixed enviroment. Be it Windows, Mac or
other Linux distributions or versions. There are not very much non-mixed
enviroments.

Editing files is much simpler and safer than using scripts which call
complex commands like zypper or rug.

Why would it be safer? Simpler? No.

Oh yes, it is. Show me a complete list of possible outputs of these two
commands. This does not exist. It is a try and error procedure to get a
working script that does automatic updates with these commands and
informs the sysadmin what has been done in a comprehensive an reliable
way.

Uh sorry? Trial and error? I just put it in YaST and that is it. No
trial, no error, no scripting. It just works. The fact that you and me
are talking about underlying stuff does not mean that automated updating
is not very easy.

You can make it more complicated if you want and there might be specific
cases where that might be, but it is not needed.

houghi
--
It's people. Source code is made out of people! They're making our
source out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle
for code. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
.