I use OpenSuse Tumbleweed. I recently clicked on the update notification (Xfce) on the panel and Yast reported an error while installing the updates, however, when running as root, the zypper dup command ran smoothly in a virtual terminal. So is the latter more convenient and safer to use?
On TW only zypper dup should be used to update.
I used to update using yast and leant the lesson to use zypper dup the hard way. I did an update a few weeks ago and when I next started my p/c yast would not start. Turned out that one of the updates was to yast and as I was using it to do the update - so I ended up with an updated system without the update to yast!
By default Xfce does not use YaST to install updates. Default applet is package-update-indicator (which calls PackageKit to refresh repositories) and it invokes pk-update-viewer (which is also PackageKit frontend). Both are unrelated to YaST.
So you really need to provide more details about what you are using.
That said, even though PackageKit should work, zypper provides more control and visibility into dependency resolution. You do not give enough information to guess whether it is PackageKit bug or may be missing feature (or may be mirrors simply caught up in between).
According to documentation,
YaST Online Update (YOU) only does the equivalent of a “zypper patch” which only installs security patches, nothing more.
Both running “zypper update” (for LEAP) and “zypper dup” (for Tumbleweed) should instead be run to properly update your system unless your system has to be ultra stable to support something like Line of Production apps and can’t be down for even a little while.
TSU
Thank you for your satisfactory answer.
I also rarely use Yast where I prioritized repositories. A few days ago updating with zypper I saw that one day it changed me, and one day not the multimedia rpm that come from packman, then mysteriously he stopped making this joke
It does not matter if youuse YaST > Software od zypper. When you have priorities set (by either of them), they will rule using both.
YaST > software and zypper are just two interfaces (one GUI and the other CLI) to the same mechanism. And the mechanism is implemented through libzypp. libzyp does the real work and manages the configuration files.
Sorry, but this makes not sense at all to me.
Maybe it is good to remark that the title of this thread (Zypper dup as root or YaST) is a bit confusing.
zypper needs to run as a root process to be able to install (etc.) things.
YaST > Software Management needs to run as root process to be able to install (etc.) things.
And even PackageKit behind the applet needs to run as a root process to be able to install (etc.) things.
Where the PackageKit method differs is that for certain actions it does not ask for the root password to assure that the system manager/administrator is at the steering wheel.
Hello,
I use only zypper with TW.
Zypper is one of the best package manager.
I don’t use yast anymore
zypper rm -u yast2
That is a bit overdone IMHO. We are only talking here about Software Managment in YaST.
But of course, everything that can be done using YaST (managing Network, Services, Users and Groups, boot/kernel parameters, partitioning, printers/scanners/sound, date/time…) can also be done using commands of which most already exist for more then 40 years.
Just as you like. But i would not recommend this to most others that try to manage openSUSE systems.
I agree with you.
Maybe I was a little off-topic.
I didn’t want to advice anyone to uninstall YaST.
I wanted only to say what you said with another words: “…everything that can be done using YaST…can also be done using commands…”.
Precisely because I set priorities to the repositories, I was amazed that zypper updated the multimedia rpm to the Repo Oss, and did it more than once, but it is not a problem because I always read before giving consent to the update and then I checked “no” by postponing it