On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 10:58 +1000, John Newbigin wrote:
> I look after 3 versions of CentOS, 2, 3 & 4. Each has it's own
> different version of yum. Different versions have different command
> line parameters, different header formats, different config file layouts
> etc.
>
That happens with any program over that period of time ... configuration
of the apache or any other programs over that period are also very
different. We are basically talking about a span between RH-7.2 to
FC-3. Look at the differences between gnome and kde for that span (for
example).
> Yum headers are also not very robust. You can't safely use yum while a)
> updating your mirror or b) running yum-arch (with -c which takes along
> time, esp on openoffice). This is a PITA when you are patching a lot of
> machines and want to obtain new software at the same time.
>
It is the safest thing to do to create your own yum headers with yum-
arch ... but we do not so that for the 14 mirrors that get mirrored from
the master mirror. For at least CentOS-3 and 4, these work fine without
running yum-arch (or createrepo) on any mirror except the master mirror
and rsync'ing it to the rest.
> I also think that yum needs a way to track certain packages only from a
> specific repository, rather than the entire repo (ie. I want 1 package
> from Dag, not everything). (I don't know if new versions can do this...)
>
New versions of yum (> 2.2.x) have "includepkgs=" which allows you to
specifically include only the packages that you want from a specific
repo.
There is also "exclude=" to exclude specific packages from a repo if
that is easier.
> I also think yum is too slow.
>
That is what the sqlite database and the md5 caching for createrepo are
addressing. Also, the whole repomd versus a header for each package
addresses that slowness as well.
These are all in CentOS-4, as CentOS-2 and CentOS-3 have an older
version of python and don't work with the newer yum versions.
> All those issues aside, every other solution seems to have similar
> problems. On CentOS-2 I normally use arrghpm which is a tool I wrote to
> do what I want. It does not rely on headers at all but it is not
> designed to solve dependencies (because rpm already does that).
>
> (OT Side note. Mirroring updates for CentOS 3 & 4 is also a PITA
> because I need to have multiple directories, one for each point release.
> It is just me???)
>
Using rsync on the /centos/4/ or /centos/3/ tree and adding the proper
"--exclude" statements can do it in one command line.
The structure has positives and negatives.
One thing we wanted between 3 and 4 was consistency in the mirror
structure, since the CentOS 3 mirror structure was already in place and
operating for more than a year when CentOS-4 was released, and for
nearly 2 years now.
Whether or not that was the best structure to adopt then is a different
question.
At this point, I would not want to change the structure, because it does
work and it is the way it has been since the beginning with C3.
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