explanation of yum.cron

akonstam at trinity.edu akonstam at trinity.edu
Sun Aug 14 15:56:39 UTC 2005


Would someone save me from my mental anguish. In earlier Fedoras the yum.cron
was  straightforward but in FC4 it seems to me someone exceeded
themselves in cleverness in creating a yum.cron such that  I can't
understand what it will do:
Can some one help?
yum.cron
#!/bin/sh

if [ -f /var/lock/subsys/yum ]; then
        /usr/bin/yum -R 120 -e 0 -d 0 -y update yum
	        /usr/bin/yum -R 10 -e 0 -d 0 -y shell /etc/yum/yum-daily.yum
		fi
		
Ok noting happens if /var/lock/subsys/yum does not exist and in
my installation it did not initially exist so I created it with a touch command.

The next line updates the yum command itself but the -R 120 seems
excessive and mysterious,

Now we come to the last line. Where does the value of shell come from
and what is it doing there? One guesses it will cause yum to process
the commands in /etc/yum/yum-daily.yum which are:
update
ts run
exit

I can almost see update being there but what do ts run and exit do in
this environment?

Is there anyone else that is as mystified as I am? Could this cron file
be made anymore obscure? I think not.
-- 

=======================================================================
When all else fails, EAT!!!
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484




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