Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

up2date: Red Hat Update Agent

The Red Hat Update Agent, up2date, installs and updates packages on RPM-based systems, primarily on Red Hat and Fedora Core Linux systems. Originally, up2date was intended for use with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Network, but it has since been updated to work with yum and apt repositories as well. up2date operates on groupings of packages known as channels , based on the system architecture and Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise release. For example, a channel might be fedora-core-3, containing packages for that distribution; this type of channel is a base channel. Child channels are associated with a base channel and contain extra packages, such as for an application or a set of applications. Entries for the channels are found in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources. This file contains an entry for each channel that associates the repository type (e.g., up2date, yum, or apt) with a channel name and a URL in the case of a yum repository. For an apt repository, the URL is separated by spaces into parts: service:server, path, and repository name. You can also include entries for a local directory of packages, known as a dir repository.

up2date has both a command-line and a graphical interface; it is primarily the command-line interface that we describe in this section. If you are running GNOME or KDE and have the rhn-applet installed, clicking on the icon in the panel brings up the graphical up2date interface. The rhn-applet is the Red Hat Network Notification ...