Fedora Linux

Repackaged files are stored in /var/spool/repackage . The total amount of disk space used is displayed by this command:

# du -sh /var/spool/repackage
15M /var/spool/repackage

If you are certain that you won't need to perform a rollback, you can delete these files to free up some disk space:

# rm -rf /var/spool/repackage

The repackage repository can grow to be fairly large. If you want to store it on another mounted disk, you can configure its directory by adding this line to /etc/rpm/macros :

_repackage_dir /bigdisk/repackage

This will use /bigdisk/repackage for future repackaging.

However, I prefer to use a symbolic link (see Lab 4.3, 'Managing Files '), so that when I look in the default location I'll know where the files have been moved:

# mv /var/spool/repackage /bigdisk/repackage
# ln -s /bigdisk/repackage /var/spool/repackage
# ls -la /var/spool/repackage
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Oct 31 14:47 /var/spool/repackage -> /bigdisk/repackage

5.4.4. Where Can I Learn More?

? The manpage for rpm (which covers the --repackage option but not --rollback )

? The Linux Journal article 'Transactions and Rollback with RPM': http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7034

? The manpage for cvs ; see the date format for -D for information on the date/time formats accepted by rpm 's --rollback option

5.5. Automating Updates

One of the main reasons that packages are updated is to correct newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It's important to keep a system up-to-date so that these security vulnerabilities are eliminated as soon as fixes are made available.

Automating system updates makes this easy. Fedora is configured to perform updates automatically; all you need to do is turn this feature on.

5.5.1. How Do I Do That?

Before turning on automatic updates, it's important to verify that yum is configured with the right options:

1. Repackaging should be enabled (see Lab 5.4, 'Rolling Back a Package Installation, Upgrade, or Removal ') so that you can recover from a bad update. Make sure you have plenty of disk space for the repackage repository!

2. Ensure that yum is enabled only for the repositories that you wish to automatically update (see Lab 5.3, 'Using Repositories ').

3. Exclude any packages that you do not wish to update automatically. In particular, think carefully about whether you want the kernel to be updated without your knowledge; such a change won't take effect until the next time the system boots, but changing the kernel can cause some software or services to fail until kernel modules are updated to match the new kernel.

Once you have yum configured the way you want, configure yum- updatesd to automatically apply updates. The configuration file /etc/yum-updatesd.conf initially looks like this:

[main]
# how often to check for new updates (in seconds)
run_interval = 3600
# how often to allow checking on request (in seconds)
updaterefresh = 600
# how to send notifications (valid: dbus, email, syslog)
emit_via = dbus
# automatically install updates
do_update = no
# automatically download updates
do_download = no
# automatically download deps of updates
do_download_deps = no

Change the do_update line to enable the automatic installation of updates:

do_update = yes

Reload the yum-updatesd configuration to activate your changes, either though the services GUI tool or by entering this command:

# service yum-updatesd reload
Stopping yum-updatesd: [ OK ]
Starting yum-updatesd: [ OK ]

Don't change the emit_via option, or puplet will not work.

5.5.2. How Does It Work?