[CentOS] running yum update on remote servers

[Robert Moskowitz]

On 02/25/2013 09:56 AM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>> I have read a couple old threads here on updates for servers, and I am
>> looking for some mechanics to getting the actual updates done.  I don't
>> want automatic updates; I want to control when and what gets updated.
> Yeah, prod servers are nasty that way. You always want to do test or dev
> or the backup first, and wait a bit.
> <snip>
>> Then there is the actual update.  I learned long ago NOT to run yum over
>> an SSH connection, as WHEN that connection breaks in the middle of an
>> update, you can have quite a problem to clean up.  All I have done
> That sounds, to me, as though you have very serious communications issues
> that need to be solved, and yesterday. We've used ssh here, and at my
> previous two? three? contracts, for years, and almost *never* have an ssh
> connection break.

Oh, it has rarely happened.  Typically when I was at a conference, using 
their wifi, to reach home to fix something.  Though once or twice my 
system I was working from decided to go south and then of course there 
went its ssh connections.  No once long ago when my firewall was a 
Centos (4?) system running shorewall, it happened that my notebook hung 
and recovery was a task and a half.  Burned once and all that.

> We've got about 150 servers and workstations here, and I do most of the
> updates, and all of it with yum over ssh, though I've had times when I
> just yum -y update &, and check the logs in the morning.