Hello everyone! I'm relatively new to Slackware but I have been so impressed with it that I made it my main distribution in January.

My question is about whether or not it is considered to be dangerous or careless to download the packages from the changelog and use upgradepkg to install them. I am thinking about writing a script that does it automatically. The reason I would want this instead of using slackpkg is because I want to install Slackware on a computer used by a couple of older folks who won't remember to install the updates themselves. I will be around infrequently, otherwise I would just do all the updates myself.

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

both method works
even if you use slackpkg, you still need to read the ChangeLog as there may be some warnings for incompatibilities (eg. PHP and OpenSSH update)

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Thanks, Willy! I have been checking the ChangeLog regularly and am subscribed to the security updates.

keeping this in mind, you can also run slackpkg unattended: see the BATCH option in /etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf.

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this update notification tool can help to remember when updates are available

https://github.com/dslackw/sun

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If you decide to use your own custom script, it would be a good idea to exclude packages that require additional tuning -- e.g. kernel and X. I don't use slackpkg, so I'm not sure how it handles these cases.

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My strong advice is DO NOT!
Updates of a stable Slackware release are usually unobtrusive requiring no manual intervention, but there heve been exceptions.
There have been instances of kernel upgrades (which may require running lilo, or if you run a generic kernel requiring also running mkinitrd), ssh and other package upgrades requiring manual intervention to handle config files,

Slackpkg is a mature tool that sat in /testing for a long while before entering official Slackware. It has inbuilt smarts such as recognising that the glibc-solibs package is being updated and so installs that first. It recognises kernel upgrades and prompts to run lilo. It looks for new config files and offers options to handle them. It offers a blacklist to avoid upgrading problematic packages.

I suggest that you do updates only when you are around. With your use case, delaying updates is highly unlikely to be an issue, even in the event of something like the shellshock bash bug.

If you must do this, follow ponce's suggestion with a carefully considered /etc/slackpkg/blacklist.

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Thanks! I hadn't seen this option yet. It is superior to me writing my own script.

Thanks! I have ruled out using my own script now for full updates. The computer is going to be running the upcoming 14.2 stable. I would definitely blacklist the kernel, among some other risky offenders if I use the slackpkg batch option. I will probably just do the updates myself as you recommended.

Do you think a script to update the Firefox ESR is a risk also?

No. Updating ESR releases is perfectly safe, recommended even.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo...nizations/faq/

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