Steve Bergman wrote:
I'm still trying to get an idea about how best to handle patches on CentOS.
Say I want to apply security patches automatically on a nightly basis. But when the push from 4.2 to 4.3 comes around, I want to defer that for when I can do it manually.
you might want to take a look at this : http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=34
it explains what the 4.x ( and 3.x and 2.x ) Versions are.
Essentially you are running CentOS-4, the Point release number only indicates how updated your machine is.
Also, I'm used to doing 'yum update'. I understand that 'yum upgrade' enables the obsoletion logic in yum, but practically speaking, when is it appropriate to use one or the other?
you should not ever need to run 'yum upgrade' on centos. Migration via yum from CentOS2 to CentOS3 to CentOS4 are not supported and actively discouraged.