Red Hat ENTERPRISE 5.4 RELEASE NOTES, Manual

Page: 288 / 466

Chapter 1. Package Updates
270
Yum is a utility that can check for or automatically download and install updated RPM packages.
Dependencies are obtained and downloaded automatically prompting the user as necessary.
• Several typos in
yum
manual pages have been corrected. (
BZ#447588
1902
,
BZ#510012
1903
)
•
Yum
now includes support for X.509 authentication at both the server and client end. This
allows users of
yum
with custom respositories to implement this increased layer of security.
(
BZ#462915
1904
)
• The rebased code in this version of
yum
handles the removal of
.sqlite
files differently from older
versions. Previously,
yum
could crash while completing a transaction if it were still cleaning up the
.sqlite
file from a previous transaction. This crash cannot happen in the current version of
yum
.
(
BZ#470274
1905
)
• Previously,
yum
did not create a
pkgSack
object for a transaction if the transaction included both
a removal and an installation of the same package. As a result, the transaction would fail with the
message
Error: Transaction Check Error: package package_name is already
installed
. Now,
yum
creates a
pkgSack
object for the transaction, removes the package, and
reinstalls it. (
BZ#471207
1906
)
• Previously, due to the constraints of a default terminal screen with a width of 80 characters, the
yum repolist command
would truncate the results of both the
repo id
and
repo name
columns. Because the beginnings of many channel ids and and names are identical, the truncation
could make it impossible to identify specific channels.
Yum
now displays the
repo id
column
in its entirety, although the
repo name
column is even further truncated. However, with at least
one of these columns displayed in full, it is now possible to positively identify specific channels.
(
BZ#471598
1907
)
• Previously,
yum
assumed that any terminal was 80 characters in width. Therefore, when it drew a
progress bar on the screen, each additional
#
printed would force a new line on terminals narrower
than 80 characters.
Yum
now determines the actual width of the terminal rather than assuming the
width, and draws its progress bars accordingly. (
BZ#474822
1908
)
• Previously, when in quiet mode,
yum
would not print details of the transaction, only the prompt
Is
this ok [y/N]
. Under certain circumstances, messages from plugins (such as the RHN plugin)
might appear directly above the prompt in quiet mode and make it appear as if the prompt were
related to the message from the plugin rather than to the transaction.
Yum
now now always prints
details of the transaction -- even in quiet mode -- so that it is always obvious to what the prompt is
referring. (
BZ#474826
1909
)
• Because
yum
does not lock
rpmdb
, other applications can make changes to the package database
at the same time that
yum
does. Previously, changes made to
rpmdb
by another application could
cause
yum
to crash; for example, if an application removed data about a package and
yum
then
attempted to retrieve this data. Now, if
yum
discovers data that is needs to complete a transaction is
missing from the
rpmdb
,
yum
will exit safely and avoid crashing. (
BZ#476195
1910
)
• Previously, if a plugin modified a
yum
transaction with a postresolve hook,
yum
would ignore
problems created by the original transaction. If the original transaction included conflicting
packages,
yum
would be unable to resolve the conflict and the transaction would fail. Now
yum
does not ignore problems created by the original transaction in situations where the transaction is
modified by a plugin and is able to resolve conflicts as it normally would. (
BZ#481164
1911
)
• Previously, when used with the
--disablerepo='*'
option, or when available repos had no
packages in them, the
yum install '*'
command produced a long warning that listed every