[TriLUG] redhat-config-network question

[Kevin Sonney]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2003 15:47:21 -0500 Chris Hedemark <chrish at trilug.org>
wrote:
> <disclaimer>Kevin, I can understand your hesitation to respond
> directly to me due to your direct relationship to my employer's
> account.  Just for the record, your personal feelings on this thread
> and mine don't reflect the business relationship between our
> respective employers.  

Followup : because of this precice relationship, I have to be
*EXTREEMLY* careful about what I say. While my opinion is my own, it can
have an impact on my relationship with my employer and my clients. But
you all knew that, right? *grin*

Oh, and i need to do something in procmail to adjust your messages to
make them readable in sylpheed without special help. I think I know the
kind of pain OE users go through when I send them messages from mutt.
All your messages are application/pgp for content type.

OK, on to the stuff I can safely address : 

> Anything in particular about apt-rpm that bugs you?  Or just lack of 
> familiarity with it?  I mean, are there any specific problems you've 
> heard of to unsettle you or anything like that?

The last code audit on it was not pleasing. I think a new one needs to
be done, but by someone more qualified than I am doing it. While there
aren't any reports that I know of apt4rpm eating rpm database, until I
get a code audit from an rpm expert, I'll hold back. I'm not going to
reccomend it to an enterpise customer - you gave the reasons why pretty
clearly for me. *grin*

> Well to some extent you are being tracked.  You have a valid email 
> address that everything is indexed against.  You have information
> about your currently installed packages being profiled & sent to Red
> Hat to be indexed against your personal identifier.  So while you can
> elect to not send a hardware profile, you are sending a profile of
> your installed packages and you are linking it to your personal
> identifier.  Is this an accurate understanding?

This is correct as I understand it. Again, though, there are enough
throw-away email services, that even that linkage isn't that difficult
to get around. Yes, the pacakges are tracked, but then again, how else
does rhn know to send oyu a "this package is out of date" email? 

Now, I've had machines get out of wack on that sync, and had to manually
re-sync the package list. So it's being sent up as frequently as, say,
Windows Update.

> And that's cool.  For what I do, up2date is currently the best option 
> at the office.  It's far from ideal, being too much like a "Windows 
> Update for Linux" than the heterogeneous package management tool that
> I really want.

Personal preference. Heck, I don't think I've used the GUI for up2date
in a long time. I do it all command line. Much nicer on VPN sessions :)

As to the rest, no it's not ideal, but it's a lot better than some of
the alternatives. apt4rpm has some great features, but for what I do,
and how I do things, up2date rocks. 

And yes, all my machines are in the web rhn interface. It's SLICK. I had
no idea it was so slick until I got here. 

> Ummm I could be mistaken but I think up2date *is* verifying GPG sigs 
> (kudos).

Oh, sorry - up2date does this automatically. I'm just not sure about
apt4rpm. 


> I wouldn't say that.  I would say that it is not, by design, an 
> enterprise package management tool. It is intended for the end user of
> 
> an individual workstation to use to manage package installation & 
> dependencies.  It is not meant at all for centralized management by an
> 
> IT organization like up2date/rhn.

Ah, a very good point. I stand (somewhat) corrected. :)

-- 
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--         Kevin Sonney         --
--  ICQ: 4855069  AIM: ksonney  --
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 Zim
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