On: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:58:01 -0500, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote > > I can't answer your question, but out of curiosity, did you just do a simple yum > update or did you follow the procedure in the release notes document? > Since I was unaware that CentOS-5.4 was released I had no reason to look for such a document. I am a digest subscriber and the release announcement is contained in the very digest that contains your message. Therefore the answer is no. My question is: Given the knowledge I possessed, why would I have gone looking for such a document? Is every yum user expected to look for release notes before each and every time that they run yum update? On the other hand, because of yum's apparent inability to clean up after itself, I had previously adopted the practice of running yum clean all before and after every update, which I did do in this case. There is a fundamental problem with the software if an automated package manager like yum requires both prior external knowledge and manual intervention to effect a particular update. Surely if a yum update set contains package dependencies that are sensitive to installation order then there should be an automated means to insure that the requisite packages are installed in the proper order by the package manager itself and not depend on manual intervention. The current arrangement seems to lend itself to unfortunate results. Sincerely, -- *** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel *** James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca 9 Brockley Drive vox: +1 905 561 1241 Hamilton, Ontario fax: +1 905 561 0757 Canada L8E 3C3