[CentOS] Compile vs. RPM

Mon Jan 9 22:06:06 UTC 2006
Tim Edwards <tim at registriesltd.com.au>

Mickael Maddison wrote:
> Ok.  So basically, every response on this list feels that RPM's are
> sufficiently stable, are created fast enough to address security
> concerns that come up, and have all the 'normal' functionality that
> pretty much anyone needs... is that a fair statement?

Yes. Out of interest what features, in the apps you mentioned in your 
original post, did you need to compile in that weren't in the RPMs?

> The one thing I've always liked about installing from tarball
> distributions is that I prefix everything into /usr/local -- so it's
> easy to find all the pieces.  This is perhaps the one thing that I
> find most annoying about RPM; spreading things all over the place.  Of
> course, being able to custom compile modules etc. has worked well.

rpm -ql packagename is easier to find the pieces than searching through 
/usr/local IMHO. Anyway packages are still consistent - they put config 
files in /etc, binaries in /usr/bin, libs in /usr/lib, shared files in 
/usr/share and so on: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

> QUESTION:  Do most of you cron the yum updates, or do you watch for
> new RPMs and update "manually"?

We have a Nagios check that notifies when updates are available. Then we 
do a yum update so we can see what's going to be updated before 
confirming with 'y' or 'n'.

-- 
Tim Edwards