YALERPM, Maintain RPMs recommended by WSS

1. Introduction

Yalerpm is a Linux RPM managing tool written specifically for the Yale community. Workstation Support Services (WSS) keeps in a database, a list of suggested RPMs. Running this tool connects to the database and then suggests or even installs the RPMs that it thinks the client machine should have. The advantage of yalerpm over Red Hat's own up2date software is allows Workstation Support to check RPMs before "blessing" them and marking them as being part of the "right answer". This tool can be used to simply notify a user of suggested updates (usually via cron) or to go as far as to automatically update a machine. Via a web interface users can manage their own groups with exclusions and additions to the WSS "right answer", enabling yalerpm to be used as a custom install tool for installing clusters of machines.

1.1 Download

Yalerpm is available here (choose your distribution):

ftp://ftp.wss.yale.edu/pub/linux/yale/rpms/yalerpm/2.3/7.3

ftp://ftp.wss.yale.edu/pub/linux/yale/rpms/yalerpm/2.3/8.0

ftp://ftp.wss.yale.edu/pub/linux/yale/rpms/yalerpm/2.3/9

1.2 Details

By default, yalerpm will interactively suggest to the user rpms to be downloaded and installed. The user may say [y]es, [n]o, e[x]clude version, e[X]clude version, [d]one, or [Q]uit. Excluding the file will prevent it from being suggested again. If the user wants to upload or download or only list the suggested rpms, there are several flags available:

-a  | --auto            Do not prompt for individual rpms, assume [Y]es.
-d  | --download        Download the suggested rpms only. No installation
                        performed.
-i  | --include         Include rpms that are not already installed.
-h  | --help            Display this help message.
-ie | --ignore-excludes Ignore the excludes file.
-k  | --kernel          Exclude kernel files.
-l  | --list            List the suggested rpms to be installed.
-q  | --quiet           Be as quiet as possible.
-r  | --report          Be quiet, but generate an end report.
-s  | --save            Keep the downloaded rpms.
-u  | --upload          Upload list to server for web display
                        and Big Brother
                        (assumes -l -e -k -q)
      --dir             Specify alternate directory for downloads
      --all             Include all rpms from the Red Hat 7.3 updates
                        directory.
      --routine         Include only rpms that are deemed Routine or higher.
                        (independent of --all)
      --high            Include only rpms that have a high priority.
                        (independent of --all)
-v  | --version         Report the yalerpm version
                                
Flags may be combined:          
  yalerpm -daq        Download all suggested rpms (-s flag is assumed) with
                      no output to the screen (useful for cron).
  yalerpm -as         Install all suggested rpms, keeping them afterwards.
  yalerpm -dake       Download all suggested rpms, including kernel rpms,
                      excluding rpms that don't already exist on this machine.
                                
By default, rpms will be downloaded to the current directory. This default
may be changed by using the --dir=/path/to/dir flag.

1.3 yalerpm under RHEL and Fedora

yalerpm currently works with RedHat Linux 7.x, 8.0 and 9. It does not work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Fedora. To get rpm updates for RHEL you will need to use "up2date". To get rpm updates for Fedora, you will need to visit the Fedora web site.

You should also read the next sections about an alternative to yalerpm called apt-rpm.

1.4 Alternative to yalerpm for Fedora and legacy Red Hat Linux

If you are running Fedora, you may wish to try using apt-rpm. apt-rpm also works under RedHat 7.3, 8.0 and 9. You can download a WorkStation Support (WSS) maintained rpm.

Download the RPMs for your specific distribution from here:

ftp://ftp.wss.yale.edu/pub/linux/yale/rpms/apt

The apt-devel package is not necessary for running apt-rpm, but it doesn't hurt to install it.

After downloading the appropriate RPM or RPMs for your distribution, install them with a command like this:

rpm -Uvh apt-*.rpm

At installation time, apt-rpm syncs with the repository, so it may take a minute or two to install if your machine is old or slow.

Run this command to see what updates are available for your machine:

apt-get -s upgrade

apt-get upgrade

apt-get --assume-yes upgrade

man apt-get
man apt.conf

apt-rpm does not upgrade the kernel by default. If there is a kernel upgrade available, apt-get will tell you that some kernel packages are being "held". You must install the updated kernel packages with the "apt-get install" command. For example, if apt-get tells you that it is holding "kernel kernel-smp kernel-source", then run:

apt-get install kernel kernel-smp kernel-source

A note for 7.3, 8.0, and 9 users: Because these distributions are so old, dependencies have changed to the point where "apt-get upgrade" will not install several available updates, because of package inter-dependency problems. It WILL notify you that these packages are not being upgraded, however.

If this is happening to you, just run "apt-get dist-upgrade", which will resolve the dependencies and upgrade properly. Often times, certain packages are no longer necessary, and it will tell you that it is replacing one package with another. Because I have configured apt-rpm to never, under any circumstances, remove a package, you will have to manually remove the package being replaced (rpm -e packagename).