updaterpms

Updaterpms compares the RPMs installed on a machine with a specification provided by the LCFG and installs, upgrades, or deletes RPMs as necessary. Using the current NIS implementation of the LCFG resource map, it would be unwieldy to hold the full list of RPMs in the map itself, so the lists are held in files which are referenced by LCFG resources. This is adequate since we tend to install most available software on most machines, but it is not ideal, and this may change as we move to a different technology for map distribution.

The package specification files are preprocessed with the C preprocessor to provide some degree of structure similar to the LCFG files themselves. Individual machines can therefore include a standard software specification and override individual packages. The RPM specifications may contain wildcards to refer to the latest version (or release); for example, the standard installation might include a specific version:

  toshutils-1-1.34

And a particular machine might override that to carry the latest available version:

  #include <standard>
  +toshutils-1-*

The '+' symbol indicates that the new specification overrides any preceeding one thus inhibiting the error message that would normally be generated by the duplicate package specifications.

The ability to import software which has been prepackaged in RPM format saves a considerable amount of work. However the packaging is not always well implemented; post-install scripts, for example, are often poorly designed, perhaps attempting to add users to a password file, or to demand user interaction, neither of which are appropriate for an automated install on a networked system. Occasionally, dependency information is also incorrect. Several standard RPM options such as -noscripts or -force can be specified on a per-package basis to help with these problems.

Some other options are also available, for example:

• Ignore the RPM; do not attempt to delete or update it (:i). This is useful if an RPM has been installed manually (perhaps for testing) and should not be deleted by the automatic update.
• Schedule a reboot if this RPM is changed(:r). This is useful for important updates such as new kernel, which demand a reboot.