[CentOS] Repodata for 5.4 updates?

[Karanbir Singh]

Hi,

On 10/28/2009 03:26 AM, Kevin White wrote:
> I haven't paid close enough attention in the past to see if this was
> "normal"...for the updates to appear before the repodata.  It does make
> sense that that would be the case, to allow things to propagate.

This is now normal, but it hasent been like this in the past. Over the 
last 8 months the updates for CentOS-5 have come from a mostly automated 
system and one of the fallouts is that this system will nominate and 
track update state on a few external mirrors before doing the metadata 
and announce[1]. This has worked flaw lessley in the past  ( only 
sometimes when specific mirrors would orphan themselves would users 
reall 'see' this ). And ofcourse when we do things like OpenOffice ( 
which pushes ~ 3 GB of updates ).

In the case of 5.4, its been slight more visible as we've still got some 
shakyness in the mirror network, and there is ~ 8 to 10 G of data to 
push through the queue ( src / debug / updates ). And its all taking a 
bit longer, hope to have announcement and metadata there today.

Also, adding to the complexity is :
- Process isnt quite 100% automated, we've not quite got there yet and 
the QC checks on each package need to be OKayed manually [2]
- Upstream has been regularly doing updates over the last 3 days which 
also means that when the scripts come around to doing 'All updates are 
good' it fails with Missing tag's . eg, the push from 10 min back 
resulted in :

M: SA-2009:1530 xulrunner-1.9.0.15-3.el5_4.src.rpm
M: SA-2009:1530 nspr-4.7.6-1.el5_4.src.rpm
M: SA-2009:1530 firefox-3.0.15-3.el5_4.src.rpm

( The M: indicating stuff Missing ) :)

I am going to now get these building and $dayjob permitting get them out 
during the morning. That should give us Status-Complete and then I get 
to do the announcements ( expect lots! ).

Usually, I wait about 45 min after the metadata is in place before doing 
the announcements.

ok, so this has a bit more detail about things than you had asked for 
but hopefully there is no some more info on the process here should 
anyone else come asking the same question as you did in the future!

- KB

[1]: The announcement is really the Flag to look for - once you see it, 
the update should be usable. Till such time as you dont see the 
announcement its not really released. I'd even go to the extent of 
saying that till you see the announcement posted, its still possible for 
us to replace the individual packages quietly. Cant think of the last 
time we did that ( off the top of my head ) - but keep in mind that its 
possible.

[2]: Its not only a 'trusting the system' issue, its also a practical 
case of looking at some of the issues and reports during the QC of the 
package and taking action based on that. Specially when there might be a 
new change in a package that has new Upstream marks which were not 
present in the past! We dont want to get sue'd or cause Red Hat any 
issues on the legal front ( we do really like them ).