[CentOS] yum vs. freenx

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Brian Mathis
<brian.mathis+centos at betteradmin.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It works fine to just ssh in from somewhere else without needing
>> screen.  The problem is when I forget and start the yum update from a
>> window where freenx on the same box is the parent session.   I don't
>> need yet another way to connect - I'm looking for something to either
>> improve my memory (unlikely...) or to keep the freenx package update
>> from breaking the connection in progress when I forget and run it
>> there.
>
> A wise man once told me:
>
>     If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for
>     the purposes they were designed, why are you interested
>     in using linux at all?
>     -- Les Mikesell
>
> So if you don't want to use screen, which has its main purpose of
> preventing processes from getting killed when the terminal is killed,
> then how do you expect us to help?

Hmmm, I didn't think anyone listened to what I said...  but in this
case I'd think nohup would be the traditional tool.  I've always
thought of screen as an unnecessary kludge when you have real window
managers available.  But it would be better yet if the program that
needed to complete a series of operations as a transactions fielded
signals on its own (and I think it does, just oddly - note what
happens if you hit ctl-c while yum is downloading files).   Or if the
package update scripts were a little more careful not to commit
suicide.

> But seriously, the alias thing is a good idea.  You can also have it
> check if its within screen instead of detecting freenx, which is
> probably a lot easier if you look at $TERM.

Hmmm, in the typical case $DISPLAY would have a very high number if
freenx is hosting the window.

> Alternatively, you could exclude freenx from yum updates and have a
> cron job that emails you once a week if there's an update to it.  At
> least that way you won't get bitten when it gets lumped into other
> updates.

Good ideas, but they need to be set up ahead of time on every machine.

> It seems strange that an update would kill an existing connection.
> Updates to other critical things like ssh have not done that in years.
>  Maybe a bug to be filed with the package vendor?

Yes, I think it would be better if things just worked in the first
place....   Maybe I'm unusual in using freenx as my primary access
method for several machines, though.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
      lesmikesell at gmail.com