[YUM] Yum on critical system or embedded linux, have you ever tried ?

[Fajar A. Nugraha]

tung dang wrote:
> Dear friends,
> I'm investigating some update tools for linux (CentOS 4.5- RHEL4 
> clone). Have you ever used Yum on critical system or embedded linux? 
> What are the limitations, weakness over other update tools (apt-rpm, 
> smart ...). Can you give me some experiences, advices over some 
> aspects : speed, dependencies (required by YUM when install), security 
> mechanism

In a critical system, the best thing to do is stick with what your 
distro provides. For Centos, this will be yum. For a linux-based 
appliance, it is best to use whatever your appliance provider gives you, 
and not directly update the underlying OS manually, unless they say it's 
OK to do so.
Embedded linux sometimes have small resources (e.g. WRT54GL only has 4 
MB flash, 16MB RAM). In such environment, there's hardly any room for a 
package manager, and usually an update means updating the entire firmware.

In my experience, yum < 3 (like the one in Centos4) is slow, but the 
speed of yum >=3 (like the one in Centos5) has greatly improved. yum is 
also flexible in that it allows plugins (my favorite is priorities).

Having use ubuntu recently, I believe apt (not apt-rpm. Haven't used 
that in a long time) is faster, and it's better at handing broken 
dependency. However, apt-rpm requires a different repository from yum. 
This means usually you can't switch apt <-> yum, you're stuck with 
whatever your distro provides you. You could always create your own 
repository mirror, but in my oppinion this requires too much effort if 
you're updating only several servers.

Regards,

Fajar
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