From: Pont Lurcock Subject: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:28:24 +1200 Content-Length: 891 Hi all, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Debianista with a duty of care to a bunch of Red Hat 9 machines. I understand that in the years since I last wielded a Red Hat root prompt, various tools have sprung up to save administrators from dependency hell: apt-rpm, yum, urpmi, up2date and who knows what else. I definitely need something of this nature, but at present I'm paralysed by choice. Never having used any of these, I have no idea as to the pros and cons of each. Having read a terse slideshow summary at http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/hepix/nesc/sieh2.pdf , I'm inclined to go with yum. But I'd appreciate advice from oxluggers with experience of this kind of thing, since we all know that the plural of anecdote is data :-). Google doesn't turn up much in the way of comparative evaluations, and the pace of development probably means that a lot of what I did find is outdated. Cheers, Pont From: Jo Shields Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 09:14:43 +0100 Content-Length: 1032 Try taking a look at http://freshmeat.net/projects/debtakeover/ - I think this is REALLY what you're after ;) >Hi all, > >I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Debianista with a duty of care to a bunch of Red >Hat 9 machines. I understand that in the years since I last wielded a >Red Hat root prompt, various tools have sprung up to save administrators >from dependency hell: apt-rpm, yum, urpmi, up2date and who knows what >else. I definitely need something of this nature, but at present I'm >paralysed by choice. Never having used any of these, I have no idea as >to the pros and cons of each. > >Having read a terse slideshow summary at >http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/hepix/nesc/sieh2.pdf , I'm inclined to go with >yum. But I'd appreciate advice from oxluggers with experience of this >kind of thing, since we all know that the plural of anecdote is data >:-). Google doesn't turn up much in the way of comparative evaluations, >and the pace of development probably means that a lot of what I did find >is outdated. > >Cheers, > >Pont > > > From: Pont Lurcock Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:49:32 +1200 Content-Length: 414 On Tue 21 Sep 2004, Jo Shields wrote: > Try taking a look at http://freshmeat.net/projects/debtakeover/ - I > think this is REALLY what you're after ;) I admit that I semi-seriously considered it -- but the machines in question run a fairly unusual hotchpotch of software (academic stuff, hence potentially creaky) and I'm afraid of breaking something that currently Just Works (or nearly Just Works). Pont From: Jon Lockley Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:56:49 +0100 (BST) Content-Length: 1725 I'm happy enough with apt-rpm but find up2date slow and unreliable. Hope that helps. Jon On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, Pont Lurcock wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Debianista with a duty of care to a bunch of Red > Hat 9 machines. I understand that in the years since I last wielded a > Red Hat root prompt, various tools have sprung up to save administrators > from dependency hell: apt-rpm, yum, urpmi, up2date and who knows what > else. I definitely need something of this nature, but at present I'm > paralysed by choice. Never having used any of these, I have no idea as > to the pros and cons of each. > > Having read a terse slideshow summary at > http://hepwww.rl.ac.uk/hepix/nesc/sieh2.pdf , I'm inclined to go with > yum. But I'd appreciate advice from oxluggers with experience of this > kind of thing, since we all know that the plural of anecdote is data > :-). Google doesn't turn up much in the way of comparative evaluations, > and the pace of development probably means that a lot of what I did find > is outdated. > > Cheers, > > Pont > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Dr Jon Lockley, Systems Manager | | | Oxford Supercomputing Centre | Email jon.lockleyqqqcomlab.ox.ac.uk | | Oxford University Computing Lab. | Tel +44 (0)1865 283569 | | Wolfson Building | Fax +44 (0)1865 273839 | | Parks Rd. | www.osc.ox.ac.uk | | Oxford, OX1 3QD | "Out of Darkness Cometh Light" | | UK | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Dominic Hargreaves Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:00:00 +0100 Content-Length: 954 On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 05:28:24PM +1200, Pont Lurcock wrote: > I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Debianista with a duty of care to a bunch of Red > Hat 9 machines. I understand that in the years since I last wielded a > Red Hat root prompt, various tools have sprung up to save administrators > from dependency hell: apt-rpm, yum, urpmi, up2date and who knows what > else. I definitely need something of this nature, but at present I'm > paralysed by choice. Never having used any of these, I have no idea as > to the pros and cons of each. Hello, While I probably can't comment much on your main question (though I have used apt for rpm and it seems to just work) have you found the Fedora Legacy project[1]? It might be helpful in providing updates for your redhat 9 installations. In the past months rather a backlog of updates has built up, but with any luck we will be back on track before too long. Cheers, Dominic. [1] http://www.fedoralegacy.org/ From: Pont Lurcock Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:09:16 +1200 Content-Length: 819 On Tue 21 Sep 2004, Dominic Hargreaves wrote: > While I probably can't comment much on your main question (though I > have used apt for rpm and it seems to just work) I'm tempted by apt for rpm, since I'm already comfortable with apt. My chief worry is that I don't know exactly what's on these machines, and I know that apt can get its knickers in a twist when dealing with an inconsistent set of packages. > have you found the Fedora Legacy project[1]? It might be helpful in > providing updates for your redhat 9 installations. Aha. Thank you. I'm hoping to be able to drag them in the direction of Fedora, but either way security updates will be welcome. The FLP pages recommend apt or yum, which seems to echo what I've been seeing elsewhere in my researches on this subject... Cheers for the help, Pont From: Oliver Gorwits Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 11:29:33 +0100 Content-Length: 845 On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:28:24 +1200 Pont Lurcock <> wrote: > I'd appreciate advice from oxluggers with experience of this > kind of thing We have some RHEL3 machines, and use YUM to manage them (partly because up2date is painfully slow, and also because RPM is still a fairly stupid tool). We have a single server that pulls updates from Red Hat, and then serves them to the other machines via YUM. An advantage is that we can, on this server, 'mix-in' some homegrown RPMs or others from external YUM repositories. It depends how much you want to look after the clients - and to me it doesn't look like you want to put as much effort into it as we have done (because they're legacy systems). Horses for courses, as they say. HTH, oliver. -- Oliver Gorwits, Network Infrastructure Group Oxford University Computing Services From: Philipp Wesche Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:04:02 -0700 (PDT) Content-Length: 2016 Just to provide a different perspective to Oliver, I've found yum to run unreliably (i.e. it sometimes hangs) on my laptop's Fedora 2 install. I guess that sort of problem would show up in a fairly obvious fashion, though, so you might want to give yum a go. The official line from Fedora/Redhat devel is to go with yum. I'm sticking with apt-get (aka apt-rpm) mostly, but note that it changes /boot/grub/grub.conf back to booting the default kernel every time any updates are downloaded (that is, at any subsequent boot, the RH-specified default kernel is booted; the file is always changed when updates are downloaded), which is annoying if you want to use a custom kernel (in which case, you'd obviously write and run a script that does the apt-get update and upgrade business and then changes grub/grub.conf so as to boot your custom kernel). HTH, Philipp --- Oliver Gorwits wrote: > On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:28:24 +1200 > Pont Lurcock <> wrote: > > > I'd appreciate advice from oxluggers with > experience of this > > kind of thing > > We have some RHEL3 machines, and use YUM to manage > them (partly because > up2date is painfully slow, and also because RPM is > still a fairly stupid > tool). > > We have a single server that pulls updates from Red > Hat, and then serves > them to the other machines via YUM. An advantage is > that we can, on this > server, 'mix-in' some homegrown RPMs or others from > external YUM > repositories. > > It depends how much you want to look after the > clients - and to me it > doesn't look like you want to put as much effort > into it as we have done > (because they're legacy systems). Horses for > courses, as they say. > > HTH, > > oliver. > -- > Oliver Gorwits, Network Infrastructure Group > Oxford University Computing Services > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From: Pont Lurcock Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:34:46 +1200 Content-Length: 627 On Tue 21 Sep 2004, Philipp Wesche wrote: > The official line from Fedora/Redhat devel is to go with yum. http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraHOWTO seems fairly evenhanded between apt and yum, but maybe it's not official (can't find anything relevant on fedora.redhat.com). > I'm sticking with apt-get (aka apt-rpm) mostly, but note that it > changes /boot/grub/grub.conf back to booting the default kernel Good to know, though I'm hoping not to have to hand-roll any kernels. Think I'll give apt a go first, for the familiarity. I'll let oxlug know how it goes, for future reference. Thanks to everyone who replied, Pont From: Philipp Wesche Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:50:05 -0700 (PDT) Content-Length: 691 --- Pont Lurcock <> wrote: > On Tue 21 Sep 2004, Philipp Wesche wrote: > > > The official line from Fedora/Redhat devel is to > go with yum. > > http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraHOWTO seems fairly > evenhanded between > apt and yum, but maybe it's not official (can't find > anything relevant > on fedora.redhat.com). My comment is based on a conversation on #fedora on freenode, hence may have been more up to date than the site you quote. Also, yum repositories seem to get new packages quicker than apt ones. HTH, Philipp __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From: David Sheldon Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:21:34 +0100 Content-Length: 1076 On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 05:04:02PM -0700, Philipp Wesche wrote: > I'm sticking with apt-get (aka apt-rpm) mostly, but > note that it changes /boot/grub/grub.conf back to > booting the default kernel every time any updates are > downloaded (that is, at any subsequent boot, the > RH-specified default kernel is booted; the file is > always changed when updates are downloaded), which is > annoying if you want to use a custom kernel (in which > case, you'd obviously write and run a script that does > the apt-get update and upgrade business and then > changes grub/grub.conf so as to boot your custom > kernel). It might be woth pinning your kernel in the apt configuration so that it doesn't try to upgrade it. Put the following lines in /etc/apt/preferences Package: kernel-image Pin: version 2.2.4-3 Pin-Priority: 1000 Where version is the version of the kernel you want to keep (you mgiht be able to do this unconditionally). This will stop apt installing new kernels. David -- "If I can differentiate that, anyone can." Professor Batty, Maths Lecture From: David Sheldon Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:32:34 +0100 Content-Length: 333 On Wed, Sep 22, 2004 at 02:21:34PM +0100, David Sheldon wrote: > Package: kernel-image > Pin: version 2.2.4-3 > Pin-Priority: 1000 I do probably mean Package: kernel as this isn't debian. David -- "For goodness sake, you could invoke a human being at this point..." -- Geraint Jones, lecturing Operating Systems. From: Pont Lurcock Subject: Re: [OxLUG] yum vs apt-rpm vs urpmi vs... Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:29:36 +1200 Content-Length: 661 On Tue 21 Sep 2004, Oliver Gorwits wrote: > It depends how much you want to look after the clients - and to me it > doesn't look like you want to put as much effort into it as we have > done (because they're legacy systems). Well, I do need to lick them into shape in some slightly ill-defined sense -- NIS logins, automated backups [1], NFS home directories and so forth. Being able to install new stuff without wading through a quagmire of depencies is a preliminary to this. [1] There was sudden enthusiasm for this after someone did the classic /home/username/# rm -rf .* to delete hidden files, and realised too late that .* matches .. Pont