[0.0] Re: [IMC-Tech] RISK: Current Fedora core 3 updates can break your system

[lee azzarello]

On 9/24/05, john milton <john at johnmilton.ca> wrote:
>
> We have X and KDE installed because for those of us who are new to this
> linux stuff here there are some things we find easier to do in a GUI
> environment (at this time all maintainace work is being done in front of
> the box, not at some remote location). Most of the time when the system
> is running it does not have a logged in user, i.e. the box is sitting at
> the main login screen with the monitor switched off, so yes,we are using
> some resources for X, but few / none of the  desktop GUI resources most
> of the time. We have a P4P800-MX board with 120 gig drive and a gig of
> ram in it so a few hundred meg of disk space here or there for some
> extra packages is far from being an issue.

It's not necessarily resource usage but more an issue of package
management. Running X and a desktop environment depends on literally
hundreds of packages, which makes managing your server more
complicated, applying updates take longer and opens up more potential
for breakage. The time required to learn vim or emacs and some basic
shell filesystem stuff will take just as long as the time spent
repairing or troubleshooting broke systems from too many package
dependencies. But in the end, if you spend your time learning unix
console applications and utilities, you will have valuable skills you
can use for the rest of your life.

> Since I still don't know what caused the fault i.e. what packages are
> breaking each other, or how, it's not clear to me how switching from
> rpm's to apt's would help, could you explain?
>
> Are apt's served from a "secure" site as is the case with RPM's from the
>   Redhat Project?

There is no such thing as apts. Fedora will always use the RPM package
format. RPM does not manage package dependencies. For example, you
want to install package A, which depends on package B, which in turn
depends on package C. If you install package A, RPM doesn't know
anything about where packages B and C are located. This is where your
package mangement software comes in. You are using Red Hat's up2date,
which in my experience tending to RHEL servers, sucks brilliantly. APT
is the Advanced Packaging Tool, built by the Debian project and ported
to most major distros. When you ask APT to install package A, it is
aware of both packages B and C, and will inform you about this fact
before it does anything. It's maximally configurable and can use GPG
keys for package validation. Look on the Fedora web page for APT
repositories of all the official RPMs in FC3.

-lee