mysql-server

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting "Pettit, Paul" <ismanager at ccbnpts.com>:

> Since there is no way to cache the downloads for implienting manually I
> guess I'm SOL.

No automatted way.  This is a feature missing in yum...

> I don't want to go to each and every machine (I have more than 1) and
> manually run yum to update them.

Do you run mysql on all of them?  If not, then maybe you should exclude
mysql from updates on the servers where you need it running, and update
those by hand.  But allow all other updates on the other machines. Or
some similar method of controlling updates of critical software on 
critical machines.

> It defeats the purpose of having cron.

No.  Yum and cron have nothing in common.  In fact, I would run yum in
cron in with check-update so it mails you a list of updates, so you know
that you need to update those packages on those machines.  So it in no
way "defeats the purpose of having cron."

> In fact Fedora Legacy's own documentation has a specific step for adding
> automatic updates (step 4 - 7.3 documentation).

Under the header "Decide if you want automatic updates" which implies
you must think about this first before doing it!  There is a reason
it is disabled by default!

> There is no mention that
> this process is NOT recommended by FL nor would I expect one.

We do not recommend it, nor do we say you shouldn't.  We say you should
decide if you want them, and if so, here is how to do it.

"Best Practices" dictate that you simply don't do automatic updates on
a production machine (whether linux, windows, solaris, or other).  This
has nothing to do with FL per se.

> To limit
> people to manually acting on updates devalues FL's service below
> Microsoft.

No, it differs in no way from Microsofts updates.  Microsoft also states
that you should not apply automatic updates to production/critical servers.
 
> As I seem to be a minority I will shut up now. Still I appriciate the
> work put into the updates.

You should not shut up, you should ask for better solutions to your problems.
Maybe yum could be modified to allow you to download the updates to the
cache without installing them (I think apt allows this, though I'm not sure).
Maybe you simply need to create a policy that works for you (exclude
critical-to-you services/features from auto-update, while allowing others
to have auto-update), or choosing some machines for auto-update while
making others be a manual update process.

> Paul Pettit
> 
> p.s. fedoralegacy.org is refusing connections. :(

I'm able to see it.  Anyone else seeing problems?  Can you traceroute it,
or dnslookup it to see if we can find a problem?

-- 
Eric Rostetter