[Yum] Bleeding edge avoidence

[Tim Forbes]

On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 10:10:45AM -0400, Tim Forbes wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 08:27:14AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 01:06, 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?
> > > 
> > > You can set the versionlock file to be somewhere remote, eg 
> > > locklist=http://my.main.server.com/versionlock/distro/$releasever or 
> > > similar. Then you just control that one file, all yum update/install 
> > > operations will use the versions specified there no matter what other 
> > > versions are available.
> > 
> > I hate to sound dense, but I don't see how that follows the
> > tested system.  Can you give a complete example or point to
> > more detailed documentation?  The scenario is that one machine
> > is used for testing and once it is approved, the same set
> > of packages should be updated on a group of remote machines
> > in different locations.  However, one or a few RPM packages will
> > be local system config files that are tied to the machine
> > location and should not be identical everywhere.
> > 
> > > > 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?
> > > 
> > > One way to do "download only" with current yum itself is to set 
> > > tsflags=test in yum.conf, that way it'll just perform a transaction test 
> > > but not actually do anything to the system. Or you can write a five-line 
> > > plugin to make it stop once download completes.
> > 
> > Again, how is someone supposed to know how to do this?  Do you
> > now have to know python to interact with yum beyond the default
> > 'I hope the repository is OK' mode?
> 
> Les, yum actually helps you solve the issue. I hunted on the internet a bit
> and deduced that it should be pretty easy to get going. On my FC5 box...
> 
> [root at tforbes-88 ~]# yum install yum-downloadonly
> [root at tforbes-88 ~]# yum
> Loading "downloadonly" plugin
> etc
> 
> Disable the feature by editing the following file like this...
> [root at tforbes-88 ~]# cat /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/downloadonly.conf
> [main]
> enabled=0

Sorry to be responding to my own answer, but I have just discovered a crutial point. After making the plugin available and enabled, you must use the --downloadonly option when starting yum.

Here are the steps I used to separately download and install a package...

[root at tforbes-88 etc]# yum --downloadonly update vixie-cron
[root at tforbes-88 etc]# yum -C update vixie-cron

> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > -- 
> >   Les Mikesell
> >    lesmikesell at gmail.com
> > 
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> 
> -- 
> timforbes(at)canada(dot)com
> tforbes(at)greenbullfrog(dot)com
> tf(at)greenbullfrog(dot)com
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timforbes(at)canada(dot)com
tforbes(at)greenbullfrog(dot)com
tf(at)greenbullfrog(dot)com