"yum update" with most of the rpms already on a USB key?

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Mon, 2009-03-02 at 18:26 -0700, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:34:15AM +1100, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> > 
> > I can't help but wonder whether a useful feature on yum wouldn't be to
> > have an option for one of the boxed in the local network to become a
> > 'repo' of sorts.
> 
> It sounds to me that you would get really all what you desire
> basically "for free" by NFS mounting 'packages' subdirectories of
> /var/yum/cache/* from a common location and while configuring yum on
> machines using that with "keepcache=1".  Metadata will remain
> "private" on each machine.  You can also use 'autofs' with a timeout
> to perform mountings on demand.

For starters, hands up everyone with more than one Fedora install (of
the same variety) in-house.

What I'm suggesting is something I've thought yum should do for some
time.

Basically, what you're doing for free is a 'crudish' hack around a
problem that most people have.  And while you can sort of achieve the
same ends this way, wouldn't it be better to just have yum do this
sanely in the first place.

In terms of large businesses, this would be a killer feature for
maintenance.  A simple to set up yum localrepo that just works, and that
really does minimize the number of downloads required.  There's no need
to download files, sync to anything, set up NFS shares or even maintain
the list of files on offer.

I'd do this, but I have no programming skills in this area.  However,
isn't most of this done.  We've got repo's that can download files to
installs.  Yum can fetch content from repos.  So all that's needed is a
middle man 'system' that acts as a repo for the local network, while
only grabbing the files it needs (in an on-demand) way, and maintains
it's files so that it removes older packages.  It's not exactly
reinventing the wheel (or is it?)


R.



-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"