[TriLUG] Re: Update strategies (was Re: Re: Newbie question reguarding YUM and Linux.)

[Lance A. Brown]

Rick DeNatale wrote:
> I'd be interested in RECENT experiences of linux updates, which have
> caused problems.  Not saying that they haven't occured, just that I
> haven't experienced them.

Two recent experiences (within last two weeks)

My predecessor had configured the department web server to autoupdate
via yum.  A new version of the httpd RPMs came out recently and were
auto-installed resulting in web services becoming unavailable when a bad
default ssl.conf got activated.  The previous default ssl.conf file had
been moved out of the way so when the new httpd RPM updated it dropped
its default ssl.conf in and tried to use it.

This isn't precisely an auto-update situation, but is still relevant.  I
have part ownership in a server rented from a large hosting company
running RHEL.  We had problems with the RHN entitlement and after
several go-rounds with the hosting company technical support they got it
straightened out and then, against specific instructions from us, ran
up2date to update all the RPMs.  We wanted to do that ourselves so we
could control it.  The update installed a new version of the
cachine-nameserver RPM which blithely moved our existing named.conf out
of the way and installed it's own named.conf in its place, borking the
domains we were serving DNS for from that box.

--[Lance]

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