After reading a sticky message in this forum, and various other warnings,
I decided to not directly install the nvidia drivers for the nv8600GT video card
in my fedora8 system, but instead go the livna route. So far so good, but today
the autoupdate scheme (which contains several to many updates per day) has
a couple nvidia-related updates, and I don't know whether to let these packages
update via the normal update process or not - especially since they say nothing
about livna in them. Specifically, the two packages I see today are:

- updated nvidia-kmod packages available
- updated xorg-x11-drv-nvidia packages available

Anyone know how to distinguish what I should let the package updater update,
and what I should not? Since I never installed the nvidia driver (except indirectly
through livna), does that mean I am "safe", and can let it update anything?

Yes, it is safe to allow the updates as long as livna is the only third party repo you have set to active. Be aware that when you update the kernel the Livna nvidia driver has to be updated at the same time. Sometimes the Livna driver will not be available until after the kernel has been updated for a couple of days.

I think most people shut off the autoupdate system yum-updatesd. It calls home a lot and can hang you up if you go to install new software. Most of the updates tend to come out on Thursday, so I run my "yum update" every Saturday. Risk of not having even a security update for just one week is pretty minimal.