Yup, that is the beauty of URPMI when trying to administer large networks of boxen.

Some questions (since you seem to be our local urpmi expert =) though. If you use the sources page
http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/index.php#third
and you select an rsync mirror, it will be autoconfigured to only download the pieces of packages needed for updates right?? Also, does urpmi auto resume or do you have to restart it if you lose the net connection?? URPMI doesn't seem to work very well over a dialup connection and when setting up my sources, I have lost the net connection (yesterday) and then it did not autoresume. I had to kill the terminal and kill the urpmi.addmedia process to unlock the urpmi database so I could restart the source setup. However, on my work conn (256k) it works flawlessly and FAST.

Ideas and thoughts??

Cheers

Jason

Chad wrote:
Another thing worth mentioning is that urpmi has a parallel install mode that 
allows you to update your whole network of Mandrake machines with one command 
from one computer. From the urpmi man doc's.

 --parallel
              activate distributed execution of urpmi to other machines (it is
              mandatory  that  urpmi  is  installed but it is not necessary to
              have media defined on any machines). The parameter  given  after
              --parallel  is  an alias name defining which extension module to
              use by urpmi (currently urpmi-parallel-ka-run or urpmi-parallel-
              ssh) and which machines should be updated, this alias is defined
              in the file /etc/urpmi/parallel.cfg as described below.


On Monday 24 Feb 2003 6:11 pm, you wrote:
  
On Monday 24 Feb 2003 5:08 pm, you wrote:
    
What were the URPMI con's again?? ;)
      
I have no Idea. :-)
I forgot to mention that urpmi can be used to work out dependences and
complie Source RPMS So if you really really want to you can download the
packages and compile them for your machine which would allow you to use
gcc-3.2's -march=XXX -o3 flags . In theory you could install a minamilistic
installation and the download all the *.src.rpm pacakges's. Dump them into
a local directory create a hdlist.cz (the data file that contains the
details of the packages available at that location to urpmi this can be
done as lots of non mdk people are running there own repositories) and then
point urpmi to the directory containing the *.src.rpm's and the hdlist.cz
set the flags and compile. Mandrake linux 9.0  compiled for K7 or P4
anyone? I'm not about to try due to a lack of harddrive space and a slow
machine (450Mhz k6-2) but it should work some one got abit of spare time
and a fast machine on there hands want to try?

    
Chad wrote:
      
On Monday 24 Feb 2003 2:38 pm, you wrote:
        
don't most rpm systems now come with automatic updaters?
e.g. mandrake - urpmi, redhat - up2date, connectiva, - apt-rpm. suse -
yast online update etc etc.
does urpmi work jason?
          
urpmi uses a slightly different system which has it's pros and cons.
With urpmi the repositories are mirrored by lots of different groups
which means that you can generally find a local Urpmi source for
updates and packages. e.g. tranzpeer http://debian.attica.net.nz/
maitains a local mirror for Mandrake (along with gentoo and others No
RH though ;-)). All you have to do is add the path to the updates
folder for your dist version or a RPM folder and the package list to
urpmi. Urpmi then downloads a list of the updates and other pacakges
avaliable along with a description of each update or package. After
that updating is quite easy if you here they've updated a package you
can tell urpmi to update the repository file list and do a search for
the update. Or you can use Mandrake Update which checks to see if your
list of updates is upto date then provides you with a GUI that has a
list of all avaliable updates and a description/explanation of what
they do or fix. You choose the packages you want to update and click
update it'll then download the updates and any updated dependences for
those packages. Thirdly you can simply use the command "urpmi --update
--auto-select --auto" which will simply download and install all the
current updates avaliable for your system with out prompting you for
anything. The command of course can quite easily be set as a cron or at
job to be done automatically every few days, hours what ever you
prefer.
Urpmi is also used to install new packages and there dependences simply
choose the pacakges you want to install and urpmi will work out the
dependences they need to run and the correct order in which they're to
be installed. urpmi repositories are also used alot by the mandrake
community with several groups or individuals runing there own ones with
a variety of software that mandrake doesn't supply or newer versions of
software that mandrake is currently testing or waiting for the next
release before including it. All support dependency resolution and all
can be added to urpmi's database of installable packages allowing them
to be easily installed from within Mandrakes Software installation
(rpmdrake/gurpmi) program or using urpmi at the command line. For
example I've got several non mandrake urpmi sources/repositories set up
(easy to do urpmi.addmedia name sourcepath) plf, texstar and several
others. If I wanted to install mplayer (mandrake hasn't released a
version for Mandrake 9.0) all i have to do is type " urpmi mplayer " as
root (or select it in Software installer ) at the command line and
urpmi will download the plf mplayer packages and dependences and
install them in the correct order. If several different sources have
the same package avaliable but different versions you can simply
specify which source you want the packages from.
Urpmi's a pretty neat tool it might not be quite as good as apt-get
(which I've never used) but still it does whats needed. And I've yet to
have it stuff up my dependencies (I've used it to install and set up
kde3 in Mandrake 8.2 which came with kde 2.2)
        

  

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