Linux application and OS updates
Updates of the Linux operating system and installed applications is done daily with "yum," an RPM installer developed by Seth Vidal of Duke's Department of Physics. It is a significant adaptation and expansion of the "Yellow Dog" Linux updater.
Why we use Yum
Yum is an emerging standard for software updating, and it is part of the Fedora Core Linux distribution. It is reliable, unencumbered by licensing restriction or "subscription" fees, and it is easy to use. To some extent yum is the reason that IGSP has adopted the Fedora distribution for its workstations.
Because of these reasons, yum has been adopted by many system administrators to distribute and update Linux software. They have established "yum repositories" where updates can be kept and where customized or license-restricted software can be housed.
The IGSP Linux infrastructure has its own yum respository, but it also accesses repositories maintained by Linux@Duke and Duke's ISDS. These Duke repositories also contain site licensed applications that can be accessed by Duke-located machines. Also, the maintainers of these repositories vet Linux updates before release.
IGSP IT watches publicly available yum repositories for applications of special interest to the IGSP research community. If you find a software resource that you think might be useful to IGSP, please contact IGSP IT.
Links:
- Linux@Duke
- Fedora Core