[rhn-users] how far are packages updated?

[Dennis Speekenbrink <d g speekenbrink student utwente nl>]

Hi everyone,

(using Red Hat Linux 8.0 with up2date version 3.0.7)
(succesfully registered and updated, it all works fine)

I have 2 general questions:

1) When running up2date -l --nox  It presents me with a list of packages it 
thinks needs updating.
It uses 3 columns, Name, Version, Rel.
What do Version and Rel. mean?
I assume "Version" is the version currently installed, while "Rel." stands 
for the updated package.
How can I "guess" what package will be installed after running up2date?  Is 
that "Packagename"-"Version"-"Rel" ?


2) How far do updates go?  Will it update to new major versions? Just 
minor, or even just patched releases?
(assuming that XX.00 is a major release, 7.XX is a minor release, and 
7.00-XX is a patched release.)
('7' is ofcourse an arbitrary number in this case)

The reason for the second question is, I was hoping that up2date would 
upgrade my MySQL package to 4.0.XX but it only updated to 3.23.54a-4

I looked for answers on the Red Hat website/mailinglist archives/google, 
but I can't really get my keywords narrowed down to get good hits.  I am 
sorry if this has been handled too many time before.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Dennis Speekenbrink