[Yum] Bleeding edge avoidence

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 08:13 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:

> Reproducing an installation starts to approach a valid reason :) However 
> build and file time stamps are not reliable way of doing this, nothing 
> guarantees that packages arrive in a given repository in the order they 
> are built: for example the vendor might have a heavier testing programme 
> for the kernel than some minor package, causing kernel to arrive in the 
> repo much later than some other package despite having an older timestamp.
> 
> If you want reproducable installations, use versionlock (plugin 
> available in yum-utils) on the packageset you tested and forget about 
> timestamps.

Is there documentation available for the various plugins and how
to use them together?  For example, given a tested system, how
would you tell a box in a different location to update/install
to the same packages and versions?   Also, now that the download-only
option has been moved out of yum itself, how do you tell it to
pre-fetch the packages you are going to need (either for this or
a normal 'update'), so as to be able to plan the timing of the
actual package installation/updates in a way not tied to internet
bandwidth or health of remote repositories?

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com