[ILUG] Service packs for linux?

[kevin lyda]

Jeremy Smyth spoke thusly:
>Has anyone spoken about getting an equivalent service-pack type thing for
>Linuxen?
>What would be involved in knocking the "21 patches" into one?? Even
>something using autoconf that would check for whatever needed patching would
>be a way to begin.

autoconf wouldn't help here.  that's for building a source tree in a
portable manner.

redhat's 6.1 has an autoupdate utility.  but for over 3 years there
have been "keep your packaages up to date on your redhat|debian|slackware
box" type scripts.  i remember when i first started using redhat linux we
wrote our own.  the ui sucked, but i was running it from cron.  then
i peeked on the net and saw that such update scripts were their own
little cottage industry with ndozens of them around.

now a days you could easily do it with something like:

cd /home/updates
wget -some-flags-go-here ftp://updates.redhat.com/path-to-updates
rpm -Fvh *.rpm

then cron could run it once a day/week.

is this simpler then microsoft's service packs?  to me, yes.  unless the
kernel changes it doesn't require a reboot.  it can happen w/o my help.
the files are incremental and i can see what the heck is going on.

anyway, that's what could and in my mind should have been done.  now
redhat's autoupdate feature should make it even easier.  i wonder if this
test will discuss the new feature and start using it.  perhaps each of
us should ask the pcweek people about that....

kevin