on 4-16-2009 12:10 AM D Tucny spake the following: > 2009/4/16 John Thomas > <gmane-2006-04-16 at jt-socal.com > <mailto:gmane-2006-04-16 at jt-socal.com>> > > Scott Silva wrote: > > And the right repositories have to be online! > > Finally, a successful commercial repository. > > > It's not without it's problems though, especially when using yum... > Blindly playing with this repository can be bad for your system's > health, plenty of care and attention is required... > > The packages require quite a bit of ongoing maintence once installed and > not all versions are stable... The packages don't tend to carry much > documentation, the reported requirements are not always accurate and the > package clean up routines are never complete... > > yum update girlfriend doesn't typically work too well if a prior version > is already installed, newer versions get installed then a cleanup > happens afterwards, race conditions exist where the previous version can > do lots of bad things to your system while both versions are effectively > installed at the same time... a yum remove girlfriend before a fresh yum > install girlfriend is recommended... Care should still be taken as yum > will attempt to honour the package dependancies and other packages such > as pet, house and car could be removed when trying to remove girlfriend, > especially if any of those were installed after girlfriend and more so > if it was requires of the girlfriend package that triggered their > installation... Typically there are significant system reconfigurations > required to support each new version... yum reinstall doesn't always > work too well with girlfriend, the package does tend to leave quite a > bit of state information in place, even after uninstall, which, if this > is the cause of the problems, won't be fixed by a reinstall... > > An upgrade of girlfriend to wife exists, it's not cheap though and > potentially can require some major system reconfiguration to support... > yum can't really handle this, often getting confused between the option > of upgrading to wife or updating to a later release of girlfriend... The > upgrade to wife can be forced in certain situations such as if any child > packages have been accidentally installed, such as by automatic > overnight updates... > > With wife installed, yum will let you install additional versions of > girlfriend, but, this is not a recommended configuration as there are > some very serious interoperability issues, especially if an installation > of girlfriend pulls in a child update... In that situation, yum would > try to upgrade girlfriend to wife, but, as you can't, in a standard > configuration, have multiple instances of wife and newer versions of > wife obsolete older versions, the old version would need to be removed, > the massive number of unresolvable dependancies involved in the that > would cause yum to crash... The only solution is to use rpm with varying > force and nodeps options to attempt to get your system functional again, > though even then, bits of old packages will still be lying around > consuming resources, especially if child packages exist... > > So, while the packages can work, there is quite a bit of work involved > in fully integrating them and maintaining them... yum can be used, but, > it's probably best to exclude them in yum.conf and manually install and > update the packages where you find necessary, taking great care in > avoiding conflicts and managing dependancies... The extra care taken in > doing it manually can really pay off in long term system stability... > Too bad that mastery of the system takes most of one's lifetime, and the skills aren't easily passed on to future admins. ;-P -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 258 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090416/8e744d16/attachment-0005.sig>