Compile vs. RPM

[chrism at imntv.com (Chris Mauritz)]

Mickael Maddison wrote:

>The one thing I've always liked about installing from tarball
>distributions is that I prefix everything into /usr/local -- so it's
>easy to find all the pieces.  This is perhaps the one thing that I
>find most annoying about RPM; spreading things all over the place.  Of
>course, being able to custom compile modules etc. has worked well.
>
>  
>

You can still do this if you download the source rpm and edit the prefix 
in the .spec file.  I used to do this for a number of packages, but I've 
gotten lazy over the years and have gotten used to leaving most stuff 
where it defaults to.

>QUESTION:  Do most of you cron the yum updates, or do you watch for
>new RPMs and update "manually"?
>  
>

In theory, you could do this.  However, there have been instances in the 
past where this resulted in a wedged machine upon reboot.  So I've 
gotten into the habit of doing a "yum check-update" first to see what is 
going to get updated before I actually commit to the update...especially 
on servers in unattended locations.  8-)

Cheers,