Howto Add Repos Using The Command Line Zmd Tool "rug"

As most people know by now, SUSE/Novell changed the default software updating system from version 10.1 and up to use the Zenworks Management Deamon (ZMD) and its command line front-end tool called rug. Whatever one might think about zmd/rug is not the scope of this HOWTO. The rug front-end of ZMD is a very powerful command line tool where a user can not only add repos with it, but also add users, configure system-wide settings of ZMD, configure user permissions and of course update his system with it using the command line (rug lu to list available updates and rug update or rug up to update the system) . rug is fairly easy to use and like I said, is very powerful.

In this little HOWTO, I will explain extensively how to add users and grant them permissions to install/remove/update software, how to subscribe to software catalogs and what the meanings are of system-wide ZMD options...

First, when you run rug on the command line without any options, it will display the available options it supports. rug supports 2 type of options: long and short ones... In this HOWTO, I will use the short options as they are very self-explaining.

• Adding a user for software management

First, one has to login as root on the command line using the su command. Adding users with rug is fairly easy, all you have to do is issue this command:

rug ua <user_name> (Where <user_name> is the name of the user you want to grand access to the ZMD for software updates)

After the user is added, rug will display the current permissions of the new user. The default permission the new user gets is view which means that this user won't be able to do any updates, only view available ones.

To change the permissions, rug by default displays a list of available permissions after a new user is added. Giving new permissions to the new user or removing them is also very easy. When one wants to grant a permission to a new user, all you have to do is add a + at the beginning followed by the permissions name (eg, +install) and then just hit enter. The same goes if you want to remove a permission of the new user, only this time you add a - followed by the permissions name (eg, -install)

For new users, just added to ZMD, it is recommended to use these permissions if you want to grant them the ability to do updates:

+install
+lock
+refresh
+remove
+subscribe
+upgrade

Also, if you trust the user you just added, you can add to the permissions list this:

+trusted

To list the users which are added to ZMD, one can issue this command which will display the users along with their available permissions:

rug ul

To edit the permissions afterwards of an already added user, issue this command:

rug ue <user_name> (again replace the <user_name> with the name of the user)

To delete an existing user from ZMD, issue this command:

rug ud <user_name>

• Adding/removing software repositories for updates using rug

Before adding a software repo, one should understand the security level of rug. rug/ZMD support 3 security levels: signature, checksum and none

The signature level is the most secure one but can also sometimes bring problems when adding software repos which are not official ones, like the Packman or the Guru repositories. For this reason, if you encounter problems adding unsupported repos using rug it is recommended to set the ZMD security level to checksum. It can be done like this:

rug set security-level checksum

To display the current security level in action, issue this command:

rug get

and look for the security-level line. It will display whether the security level is signature, checksum or none (disabled)

Adding software repos or removing them is also very easy with rug. Its syntax is as follows:

rug sa <repo_URL> <repo_description>

Example:

rug sa http://suse.inode.at/pub/update/10.2 "SUSE Update Channel"

(note the quotes around SUSE Update Channel. They are needed if you use spaces, if not you can leave them out)

To remove an existing repo channel, you first have to list all channels using rug. Issue this command:

rug sl

This will list all available channels which are used by ZMD for updates. To remove a repo channel, find its number in the first colon and issue this command:

rug sd <channel_number> (where <channel_number> is the number of the channel reported by rug)

All of the above commands can be used with normal user permissions (eg, not logged in as root using the su command) after you granted the ZMD permissions listed above (+install, +lock, +refresh, +remove, +subscribe, +upgrade, (+trusted)) with the exception of adding or removing users and setting system-wide ZMD preferences like security levels.

By default, when adding a new repo channel using rug, if the user which adds the channel to the list has +subscribe permissions, he/she will be added to the subscription list automatically, though you can issue the below command just to be sure.

rug sub (will subscript the user who issued this command to all available repo channels in ZMD)

• Setting System-wide ZMD Preferences

ZMD has some system preferences which can be modified only by the root user or by any user which has the +superuser permissions set. The default system preferences of ZMD are set to a good value by default, although one can tweak them a little.
System preferences can be listed by using this command (as shown above)

rug get

There are 4 preferences one might want to change, those are:

max-cache-age
refresh-interval
run-transaction-test
security-level

ZMD, by default, keeps downloaded updates in its cache directory (/var/cache/zmd) for 30 days. In my opinion, this value is too high, unless you want to use the rollback option of rug which will rollback all the update changes to a specified amount of days. If you do not use the rollback functionality of ZMD (which is disabled by default) you can set the max-cache-age value to 3 or 4 days. This means that rug will clean its cache directory every 3 or 4 days (depends on the setting). To change the max-cache-age value, issue as root this command:

rug set max-cache-age <value> (where <value> is the amount of days you want ZMD to keep its cache)

The refresh-interval option of ZMD tells it after how many seconds (yes, seconds) it will refresh itself and look for newer updates. The default value is set to 86400 seconds (24 hours). If you want to change it to a lower value, say, to check for updates every 4 hours, then issue as root these command:

rug set refresh-interval 14400
rug set refresh-interval-software 14400
rug set refresh-interval-hardware 14400
rug set refresh-interval-system 14400

The run-transaction-test option will force rug to do a "dryrun" test before installing new updates and check if it'll encounter any problems which might cause not to install the updates. To set it (I recommend this one), issue as root this command:

rug set run-transaction-test True

Finally, the security-level option, which was already explained above, sets the desired security level of ZMD. It supports 3 different security levels: signature, checksum and none. To set one of them, issue as root this command:

rug set security-level <type> (where <type> can be either signature, checksum or none)

Hope that helps a bit

Nice howto microchip. Why not do a full howto on rug on the wiki here.

Nice howto microchip. Why not do a full howto on rug on the wiki here.
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is this enough info? should I add some more? can I just copy this whole text and add it there?

you can just copy/paste there if you want. doesn't have to be xpages long as long as it has the relevant info,in a sensible order, it's ok

andy

w00t microchip great tutorial, thanks!
a microwiki is enough, its not the quantity its the quality, like many things after all, right?
Hooray for microchip in microwiki !

is this enough info? should I add some more? can I just copy this whole text and add it there?
[/b]

It's up to you. You're the one that wrote this. Maybe with the wiki, you'll write about all of it. Or you can copy this for now, and maybe later expand the wiki.It's up to you. The question is, what do you want to do?

w00t microchip great tutorial, thanks!
a microwiki is enough, its not the quantity its the quality, like many things after all, right?
Hooray for microchip in microwiki !
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you like it??? comes directly from the rug-master :lol:...

/me puts a microwiki on this forum

mmmmmmmm... how to add a wiki? LOL... i don't know where to add it

here http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?wakka=HowTos in the microhowtos you can add the rug microwiki
Its basically just a micro copy and paste, just click the microbutton at the bottom to edit, after logging into (need to open another account i think, if you havent done yet: the one of the forum is a separate thing [btw be careful for typos... you might involuntarily register as microship] )

MICRO EDIT: if you prefer we could do that for you and put you as the author...

here http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?wakka=HowTos in the microhowtos you can add the rug microwiki
Its basically just a micro copy and paste, just click the microbutton at the bottom to edit, after logging into (need to open another account i think, if you havent done yet: the one of the forum is a separate thing [btw be careful for typos... you might involuntarily register as microship] )

MICRO EDIT: if you prefer we could do that for you and put you as the author...
[/b]

wikki wakka makka kakka pakka

btw, whats with you and micro?

i'll try to add it, if i'm dumb enough and cant do it i'll ask the wakka masters