Re: updating using RPM on RedHat

On Mon, 3 Jan 2000 josh@saratoga.lib.ny.us wrote:

> If I upgrade using RPM will everything in my /etc/squid/squid.conf
> be preserved and continue to be used or do I have to back things up
> and then restore them? Has anyone set up a script to use the rpmfind

if you use rpm --upgrade, old files are generally saved as file.rpmsave..

> program to automatically check for an update? When I ran rpmfind it
> found STABLE4, but it didn't find STABLE5. Is there an official RPM
> site for the latest release?

well, there is a squid-official binary RPM at

http://home.earthlink.net/~intrep/projects/squid/index.html

but that doesn't mean it'll put everything in the same place as your red
hat rpm..

> Is there any advantage or disadvantage between using the tarball and
> the RPM. I know, for example, MySQL says to use the RPM binary

i personally always use the tarball. you know that it is compiled for your
architecture, on your box, and that it will probably always upgrade to the
same paths - because it puts files where the developers intended them to
go. the downside is that it's a small amount more maintenance at install
time, making symlinks and whatnot. Well worth it, IMHO.

> script or make file setting so that the code goes to the same place
> regardless? Right now I have everything in /usr and /etc from the

./configure --help will show you the different switches to set prefixes
for various files. you can also read the red hat patches, if you want to
see what they did to set paths.

> RPM. The tarball wants everything in /usr/local. I am sure that if I
> manually went through and tried to make sure all the references to
> /usr/local/squid/etc were switched to /etc/squid I would screw it up
> completely by missing some. For me this is another reason to stick
> with the RPM.

actually, to me, that's a great reason not to use packages that change
paths. how long will it take your package maintainer (red hat) to build an
rpm for the next version? what if there is a critical patch you need to
apply? etc, etc.

source distributions might SEEM like more work, but in the long run,
they're almost always easier to maintain.

good luck,

--
Blue Lang, Unix Systems Administrator, QSP Inc. - Raleigh, NC
Phone: 919.875.6994
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