Thanks to the responses here to a past thread*, I understand that I update Tumbleweed only with zypper dup, and have no use for zypper up, zypper patch, or even zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change .
After looking at the zypper cheat sheet, though, I have a related question:
Is there anything else that a relatively inexperienced openSUSE Tumbleweed user like me would regularly want to do with zypper? My impression is that zypper dup is about it, and that I’ll be better off doing everything else through Yast.
Hi, confirming that with TW you should use “zypper dup” to update your system (–no-allow-vendor-change being implied by default now AFAIK).
As a relatively inexperienced user I think that most other tasks are more easily done (and relatively error-proof) with YaST2-Software.
Nevertheless, occasionally using such commands as “zypper info”, “zypper search”, “zypper install”, “zypper install-new-recommends” or “zypper remove” (or better still their short forms) might save time or provide additional options.
Sometimes, repository manipulation is easier with zypper than it is with YaST, especially if you have a long list of additional repos.
Commands like “zypper repos” “zypper addrepo” or “zypper removerepo” may be your friends.
So I think that being aware of those commands and being prepared to study the relevant section of “man zypper” is still worth the effort even for beginners.
Thanks, OrsoBruno. I’ll investigate the specific commands you recommended.
peteh100, I’ve used both zypper --help and man zypper, but gather that the overlap with Yast is large, and that I’ll usually want to use Yast if I can. Zypper also lets me issue commands I believe I shouldn’t issue in Tumbleweed, like zypper up and zypper patch. That’s why I sought feedback from more experienced Tumbleweed users.
I always use zypper up in tumbleweed. It’s the same as zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change. As far as my experience is concerned, zypper up only upgrades what I have with existing vendors (packman, kernel/HEAD: etc)
In particular, “zypper up” will not install packages with lower versions (i.e. downgrades), which can happen in Tumbleweed.
E.g. xorg-x11-server’s version changed from 7.6_1.18.3 to 1.19.0 (the real version) a few months ago, and that broke all systems that were updated with “zypper up”…
Therefore it is highly recommended to use dup, even though “up” should work most of the time as well (but not always).
As far as my experience is concerned, zypper up only upgrades what I have with existing vendors (packman, kernel/HEAD: etc)
“zypper dup” also doesn’t change vendor by default any more since a few weeks (as already mentioned), so “–no-allow-vendor-change” should no longer be necessary to keep the existing vendors.
IOW, use “zypper dup” on Tumbleweed, not “zypper up”.
I’m sure I read something a year or 2 back that “dup” wasn’t necessary in tumbleweed. I never considered downgrading, so I bow to your superior knowledge, wolfi323. Thanks.
Changed sometime 6-9mths(?) ago, so they are different.
So,
Even on TW I’ve used zypper to…
Search for packages (and files within packages)
Install packages
List and install patterns
Clean cached install files when necessary
Then, if you want a number of machines set up similarly or want to standardize a long, complex install I’ll use zypper commands as part of a setup script.
Well, “dup” is not necessary most of the time.
But there are situations that “up” cannot correctly handle. (and such situations can occur in Tumbleweed, as every snapshot basically is a new distribution, strictly speaking)
Now that “zypper dup” also supports “vendor stickiness” (and it’s even enabled by default, i.e. “zypper dup” will not switch packages to different repos by default), there should be no need to prefer “up” any more (and take an unnecessary risk) though.
Interestingly, I tried zypper dup on my tumbleweed partition today and it was going to change vendor on 2 updates. Yast didn’t offer any vendor changes.
Just my 2 pen’orth (that’s my 2 cents for most of you).
Perhaps check /etc/zypp/zypper.conf for the relevant configuration. (My understanding is that vendor stickiness is now configured as default for TW at least.)
##
## EXPERTS ONLY: TUNE DISTRIBUTION UPGRADE (DUP)
## Set whether to allow changing the packages vendor upon DUP. If you
## are following a continuous distribution like Tumbleweed or Factory
## where you use 'zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change' quite frequently,
## you may indeed benefit from disabling the VendorChange. Packages from
## OBS repos will then be kept rather than being overwritten by Tumbleweeds
## version.
##
## CHANGING THE DEFAULT IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
##
## Valid values: boolean
## Default value: true
##
# solver.dupAllowVendorChange = true
