I have Yast online updates confugured to be automatically, including interactive patches and everything else, so that it does all the Updates on its own.
But it seems to me, that Yast only updates the system packages, like Kernel, libs, and so on, but not the application packages. Am I right with this assumption? And is there a way to let Yast update everything automatically? If so: how can I set that up?
YaST Online Update does the same as zypper patch. It updates packages that are in the respective Update repos of the official release, that are the Update-OSS and Update-non-OSS repos (I assume one does not have the debug and source repos active).
It does not update to newer versions of packages that are in any other repos you may have subscribed to (most have subscribed to Packman, but some have more). You can do that with zypper dup, or in YaST by setting it to display the installed packages (several routes to either display all on your system or all from one particular repo on your system) in the right panel and then Right-Click somewhere there and choose: Update all in this list to a newer version if available.
And just for your information: I would never advise to do this kind of action automatic without any chance to intervene.
But in general, when you want to do actions “automatic” at a certain time, you create a command in your crontab that either does what you want or start a script that does what you want. And the command(s) to be used are of course zypper commands in this case.
I for one just have activated Pacman and the Nvidia Repo and manually added the Google Repo for Chrome additionally to the normal ones. So, just for clarification: even if there is the marking in the repo list for “update automatically” at (for example) the Google Repo, Yast does not install newer versions of Chrome for instance, because it just looks into the default update Repos?
I am asking because I was under the impression, that if a repo is marked that way, Yast also updates packages from there…
Where do you see that a repo is marked for “update automatically”?
I mean that you must show things. Please do not tell your conclusions, but show the facts where you base your conclusions on. In this case, show that repos list end explain where you see this “update automatically”.
BTW, you are now talking too loosely about “YaST does x…” and “does YaST not do …”
Your original post talked about YaST Online Update. And YOU (either from the YaST GUI or the command you) does only use the Update repos for patches (as explained above). And there are only Update repos for the official/standard repos (OSS and non-OSS). And the packages in OSS/non-OSS will not be changed. Security and recommended updates come as Patches through the Update repos and are installed by either YOU or zypper patch (but doinf zypper up will also include the zypper patch action)
Talking about YaST, you must remind that YaST is a general tool for doing a lot of system administration. Even when you restrict yourself to YaST > Software, there are several modules and using YaST > Software > Software Management is able to update from other repos (e.g. your Chrome repo) when you tell it so (as also explained above).
If you want updates to come from a repo other then the standard you must make a vendor change to the repo. to tell the system that updates will come from packages in that repo.
As an example to change vendor to packman first do a zypper lr -d. Note the number of the packman repo then zypper dup --from # where # is the repo number noted.
BTW, when you next time want to show a repos listing, better use
zypper lr -d
and copy/paste that between CODE tags in your post (to get the CODE tags, use the button with the # in the post editor). That is much easier then handling screen shots and the like. And better readable also.
And that is true for most computer information you want to show here. Avoid the GUI images, but use commands and show them (including the prompt-command line, the output and the next prompt line). That is an enormous help to your helpers
Sorry, but as I see it, this thread is about what YaST > Software > Online Update does (and does not). It is not about vendor changing, I assume the OP did that already (for Packman) and for Chrome or Nvidia, that is not needed IMO because those packages are only on those extra repos.
I believe it is just for refreshing the repo information.
Edit: I just thought about it some more. I think it works in the following manner. When you, either, “zypper ref” or “zypper up” or even “zypper dup”, I think “zypper ref” gets called and the repos that are defined as “Automatically Update” will have their updates added to the software that will be updated. I hope I made some sense (for all I know, I could be waaaaay off).
Well online updates only get patches not not anything from "other " repos. If you want updates from all repos use zypper up or the GUI software updater and you must have proformed the vendor change in order to receive from the the “other repos”
Not true IMHO. Vendor stickyness means that you get your updates only from the repos where the package is from. It is of no importance how you came in the situation that a package is from a certain repo (where you will thus get also your updates).
A package is installed from a certain repo because you did that directly, often because the package is not on another repo. And that is not only true for packages installed during system intallation, but also for packages installed later from e.g. the OSS or non-OSS repos, but it is also true for packages from repos that are the only providers of a package. You do not do a vendor change, because you did not have the package from vendor A, you just installed from vendor B and that is the only one that has it. E.g. when you install Chrome from the Chrome repo, that is no vendor change, you did not have it and it is not on the non-OSS repo.
Nevertheless an update will always install the newer version from the Chrome repo (even if there is a higher version on another one on e.g. a later added repo) because it sticks to the vendor, not because of a vendor change that was or wasn’t done.
That is how I see and understand the concept of vendor stickiness it too.
And this is also the reason why I did no vendor change to Packman, because I just installed one or two Codec packages from there. So I don’t see any reason why I should exchange a whole bunch of system libs or whatever, just because I have Packman in my Sources list.
Correct me if I’m wrong but in this case I think that I will have a much more stable system, if I stick to the default repos.
The subject is now: Is it sufficient to just install a few packages from Packman replacing the same ones installed from OSS, or does one need to do the full switch.
You did the first and seem to be happy with this. But keep in mind that the whole reason for Packman is that the packages from OSS are crippled to avoid legal problems. Thus imagine package A is a crippled packages from OSS. It calls library functions from package B that are also available on OSS in a crippled version and package B is thus a dependency of package A and thus installed…
Now you install package A from Packman. Package B is a dependency of package A, but it is already installed from OSS. Without either explicitly installing package B from Packman (or doing the vendor switch), you will not get a fully functional combination of A and B.
The experience here on the forums, which you can check by browing through the threads in the multi media section, is that people report multi media problems claiming that they careful installed the packages they thought they needed from Packman. When they then are encouraged to do the vendor switch, almost 100% of these problems is solved.
People may try to switch individual packages to Packman because they think that they have a good inside in the internals of these multi media packages, but they mostly get a problem somewhere, sometime and the majority here is not willing to sort that out for them because a simple vendor switch will solve it. The vendor switch did this already for years and versions on end and maybe it was even designed for this case.
Oh, and I do not understand your fear of installing packages from Packman. Packman only has things needed because the are not in OSS for legal reasons. Packman people are really not wanting to invent the wheel again and creating copies of packages already in OSS. When the MP3 patents expired, de codecs in OSS were made fully functional and the Packman ones were removed. No, no rubbish in Packman.
I agree with hcvv, that it is better to switch all to packman.
Here’s the thing to remember. OpenSUSE is a community distro. Most of the packages are maintained by volunteers from the community. And many of those same volunteers are also looking after the packman builds of their packages. So the risk of picking up problems is quite small.
okay, guys. I checked again in my system how many and which packages would be affected by a Vendor Change to Packman and since it were only 8 packages which were only multimedia related, I did the Vendor Change.
My concern was that in Packman, it seems like that there are also a lot of system libs and even if I trust the Packman people that they don’t want to break my system, I dont’t want to change the Vendor of crucial system libs to Packman. But since its just Codec stuff on my machine, it should be allright.
Vendor change only gets package names that you already have installed. There are not really any “base system” files there most are proprietary things that do not get installed with the base system that you may want or need but it is always your choice…