[AG-TECH] Yum package updater is offering AccessGrid update

[Douglas Kosovic]

Hi Ben,

> Luckily (or perhaps it was planned) this same yum update is offering me the following:
> 
> python-ZSI - 2.0-4.20070622svn.fc8.noarch updates python-ZSI - 2.0-2.20070622svn.fc7.noarch

Fedora Updates repository has a python-ZSI-2.0-3 RPM which clobbered 
python-ZSI-2.0-2.20070622svn, so I bumped the revision number and 
released python-ZSI-2.0-4.20070622svn.

AGTk requires some bug fixes that were put in the ZSI SVN repository 
after ZSI 2.0 was released.

> python-bajjer - 0.2.5-6.fc8.noarch updates python-bajjer - 0.2.5-4.fc8.noarch

Newer bajjer fixes a jabber disconnection issue which happens after 
several hours and a python segmentation core dump.

> Is it possible that yum is offering these because they have been recognised as a dependency (I didn't think yum was that clever), or is it a coincidence that they are being offered at the same time?

It's offering to update the installed RPMs that have newer versions 
available in the yum repositories. Sometimes additional RPMs are needed 
to resolve dependencies on the newer RPMs and asks for your confirmation.

> If yum-updatesd had not offered the python updates, I presume my AG3 client may not have worked following the yum AccessGrid update. Or would the installation of the AccessGrid update have required these same python upgrades as dependancies?

On the contrary, if you were unfortunate and had currently 
python-ZSI-2.0-3 installed, which broke features like adding and 
removing from the data section of the VenueClient. You would have missed 
out on fixing it if you didn't yum update.

You just went from a very late AG 3.1 pre-release to actual AG 3.1, so 
the RPM dependency version numbers are identical. I just bumped the 
revision number (i.e the number after the hyphen) of several RPMs after 
incorporating some bug patches. Apart from maybe python-ZSI, if you 
didn't install the python updates, it would have worked more or less the 
same as before the updates.

> I'm mainly asking because the AGSC support many linux users, and we sometimes need to have some control over what client version people use. or at least have some idea of what version they may use. It may not always be convenient if users' linux machines are automatically upgrading the AG3 clients. I'd personally only upgrade certain applications manually so I know where I am with them. For things like kernel updates, I'm fine with yum-updatesd doing its thing.

Fedora updates often come thick and fast, with version number and not 
just the revision number increasing sometimes. I perform a full yum 
update on my Fedora 8 AG node's display PC about once a week, if 
something breaks an existing AG RPM, I'll try and release something 
ASAP. If you discover an update breaks one of the existing AG RPMs let 
me know.

I've had cases where kernel updates break the audio driver or even fails 
to boot, fortunately you can readily boot with the previous kernel version.

If RPM version control is a concern, you could consider Red Hat Linux or 
CentOS 5.x, where they don't increase version numbers, but back-port bug 
fixes. I will be releasing RHEL 5.x/CentOS 5.x AG 3.1 RPMs next week.

Cheers,
Doug


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Douglas Kosovic
> Sent: 17 January 2008 10:46
> To: ben.green at manchester.ac.uk
> Cc: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] Yum package updater is offering AccessGrid update
> 
> Hi Ben,
> 
>> My FC8 machine has yum-updatesd running, and recently this has been
>> offering me the following update (amongst about 100 other package updates):
>>
>>
>> AccessGrid - 3.1-1.fc8.noarch updates
>  > AccessGrid - 3.1-0.4.20071130cvs.fc8.noarch
>>
>> Is it recommended that users follow this update?
> 
> Yes, 0.4.20071130cvs was an earlier CVS snapshot prior to 3.1 getting
> released (the zero in the revision number is a Fedora convention for
> pre-releases and is incremented to one for the actual release).
> 
> Make sure you install the latest python-ZSI and python-bajjer.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Doug
> 
>