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⁠7.3.2. AutoUpdate

AutoUpdate, written by Gerald Teschl, is another Perl script that can be used to automate RPM downloads or installations. Available freely under the terms of the GNU GPL from www.mat.univie.ac.at/~gerald/ftp/autoupdate, AutoUpdate is very similar to AutoRPM in terms of both functionality and potential applications. Unlike AutoRPM, AutoUpdate offers no interactive capability. However, AutoUpdate does have the capability to manage dependencies correctly; when using AutoUpdate to install software that depends upon other uninstalled software, AutoUpdate attempts to resolve the dependencies and to install all necessary software packages.
AutoUpdate bases all decisions about what software to download or install upon its configuration file, /etc/autoupdate.d/autoupdate.conf. By default, AutoUpdate provides several additional configuration files pre-defined for downloading updates for the most popular RPM-based Linux distributions (Red Hat Linux, Mandrake Linux, Caldera/SCO OpenLinux, and SUSE Linux). The autoupdate.conf file can be modified to configure AutoUpdate to install software automatically.
Table 8-3 lists the five commands that compose all the utilities provided by AutoUpdate:
Table 8-3AutoUpdate commands
Command
Usage
autodld
downloads updated versions of all installed software
autoget
downloads specific RPMs from remote sites
autoupd
installs more recent versions of currently installed software
autoins
installs specific applications
automerge
merges new RPMs into an existing directory of RPMs, removing any old versions
autopurge
removes old RPMs from an existing directory of RPMs.
These tools can access remote files by using a variety of methods. Like AutoRPM, AutoUptodate can download files if given an FTP URL. AutoUpdate can also access HTTP URLs and local files. Its additional dependency-tracking functionality and support for additional file-access methods make it suitable for use in cases where AutoRPM might be inappropriate. AutoUpdate cannot be used interactively, however, making AutoRPM more useful for nonautomated purposes.