Alternatives to Red Hat Update [LWN.net]

From:		Alex Hornby <alex@hornby.org.uk>
To:		letters@lwn.net
Subject:		Alternatives to Red Hat Update
Date:		26 Mar 2003 11:09:16 +0000

Hi,

With the recent changes to red hat's update and support policy it may be
useful to draw readers attention to alternative methods of auto applying
updates to red hat systems.

Many people will already be familiar with Ximian's Red Carpet tool.
However, whilst this is free to use as a client, to publish software via
this mechanism one needs an agreement with Ximian.

One alternative which hasn't recieved as much attention is apt for rpm,
which I obtained from http://freshrpms.net/apt/ . This provides debian
style auto updates for red hat users. In addition to the command line
there is a gtk 2 GUI for apt called Synaptic available on the same site
which provides an alternative to red-carpet or the up2date tool.

The main advantages of apt for rpm I have found are:

* Free as in beer _and_ free of hassle. No registrations required.

* Open backend - anyone can put up an apt repository. This has two main
benefits:

* I've successfully done kernel upgrades using apt - something
red-carpet seems to baulk at.

* Software developers can set up their own apt site. For an example of
this in action see: http://gstreamer.net/releases/redhat/ . This is not
the case for people wishing to distribute by Red Hat up2date or Ximian
red-carpet.

* Not dependant on the fate of any one commercial entity. (e.g. what
happens to the red-carpet backend if Ximian goes under or has a change
of corporate policy)

The only disadvantage I can see is that apt4rpm and synaptic are not
installed by default by Red Hat (a problem they share with red-carpet).

Regards,
Alex Hornby.

PS Whilst on the subject of updates, I've found that rpm 4.1.1 from
ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/test-4.1.1 seems to cure the "rpm locks up"
problem I and others have been having with RedHat 8.0

--
Alex Hornby | See http://www.hornby.org.uk/

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Alternatives to Red Hat Update

Posted Mar 27, 2003 3:02 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

PS Whilst on the subject of updates, I've found that rpm 4.1.1 from ftp://ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/test-4.1.1 seems to cure the "rpm locks up" problem I and others have been having with RedHat 8.0

That lock up was what pushed me away from Red Hat... I'd been a Red Hat user after switching from Slackware several years ago, back during RedHat 5.2 or some such. Installing 8.0, though, made me think it was time to try out Debian (which I'd been eyeing for months). Part of the problem was Gnome 2.0, which I admit to not being fond of. (Reduced configuration options is great for simplifying things, unless it happens to be your sacred ox that gets gored. A couple of my sacred oxen were gored.) Already missing Gnome 1.4, I was inclined to be negative, but I've adapted to those sorts of changes in the past. But being inable to apply the Red Hat updates... that was a bit much.

It's nice that they finally fixed this, but it is many months too late for me. Really, we understand when a release has bugs, but Red Hat rather screwed up by putting out a major release where the *package manager* had a serious bug that hampered those who would apply security patches!

-Rob

Alternatives to Red Hat Update

Posted Mar 28, 2003 6:02 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I don't understand what's going on with RPM 4.1. AFAIK it's been done for a little while now and fixes several glaring issues on RH 8 as well as older releases. They should have pushed out an update many months ago, they would have had a lot more happy customers.

Another Alternative to Red Hat Update

Posted Mar 28, 2003 18:16 UTC (Fri) by jfranks (subscriber, #1213) [Link]

Another alternative, which I prefer, is Autorpm. It is a command line tool designed to be used interactively or in a cron job, which can download and/or upgrade any updated rpm packages. You can aim it at redhat or one of the mirror sites and have it automatically check for and download updates. It will check the RH signature before saving them. You can then have local machines automatically update from the local respository you have created. We do this with about fifty workstations running 7.3 and 8.0. Essentially no intervention is required, but I have not trusted it to upgrade kernels.

Another Alternative to Red Hat Update

Posted Mar 29, 2003 2:20 UTC (Sat) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

*That* sounds like an article.

If Linux Journal doesn't wanna pay for it, we'll take it over at Linux Gazette for free. ;-) (If you're not a writer, I'd be glad to ghost...

Another Alternative to Red Hat Update

Posted Mar 29, 2003 11:26 UTC (Sat) by ahornby (subscriber, #3366) [Link]

apt4rpm also provides a command line interface (and you can run it from cron). I use both this and the synaptic GUI.

One other reason I like it is that it brings some convergence between Red Hat and Debian based distros. (apt was originally used over .debs, but is now available for both .debs and .rpms)

apt4rpm would make a great addition to the LSB :) That way whatever package system your distro uses the command line interface could be common apt-get commands.