[Yum] "update --dry-run" equivalent output from yum or yum-utils?

[jimjcollins at comcast.net]

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: seth vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> 

> 
> On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 15:51 +0000, jimjcollins at comcast.net wrote: 
> > 
> > I don't think "check-update" does the dependency resolution to 
> > determine if any additional, potentially uninstalled, packages need 
> > to be pulled in to satisfactorily install the listed update packages. 
> > 
> > Or perhaps "check-update" does the dependency resolution but is not 
> > announcing that behavoir in its output as is done for the "yum update" 
> > command? 
> > 
> > The yum man page makes no mention of "check-update" doing the 
> > dependency resolution, seems to be indicating that only the list of 
> > update packages will be output. 
> > 
> 
> 
> in yum.conf 
> 
> you can add 
> 
> tsflags=test 
> 
> which will do everything except the rpm transaction will be run with 
> --test 
> 
> -sv 
> 

You are indicating to run "yum update" with yum "assume-yes" option and since "--test" will be passed to rpm command, no installation occurs? That's an interesting idea.
However, that's not equivalent to "up2date --dry-run" in a key way as it implies the full rpm package is downloaded to the audited server versus just package header info as occurs during "up2date --dry-run". The time/bandwidth to download the tens of packages to the 1000's of servers under management makes that an extremely expensive step merely to audit what update packages are applicable. Ultimately, many of the audited servers would only get a small subset (critical security and bug fixes) of those packages applied so there is no reason for the entire set of update packages to be downloaded to every server being audited.
- Jim C.
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