I do remote YUM updates on my servers frequently.  I've only had a few problems over time, most of which have little or nothing to do with the update itself.  IE, a hardware problem being discovered due to a reboot, or the reboot taking far longer than expected due to the machine having been up for around a year and an FSCK was forced.

Overall, CentOS w/YUM seems pretty rock solid.

Scott Silva wrote: 
Sam Drinkard spake the following on 3/20/2006 7:39 AM:
  
My server has not yet been updated with all the goodies and is still a
stock 4.2 installation.  What is the consensus about remote updating? 
Would it be better if I were to physically be there and do it or are
things stable enough that I could do it remotely and then reboot.  It's
kind of a PITA to have to go downtown to the C0-LO site, but can be done.


Thanks..

Sam
    
A remote update works 99.99% of the time, but nothing is "infallible". You can
do the remote update, and run downtown only if it fails. You only need a
reboot if you get a new kernel, which you will probably get. The biggest
gotcha is if you are running something non-standard that an update might hose.
But if that is the case, you can always remotely fix it or try to go back.

The risk of running without the updates can offset the risk of updating most
of the time.

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