Someone please explain to me why this stupid YaST piece of garbage just downgraded my kernel back to the original 20a? Run online update and it upgrades it, run system update and it downgrades it, run online update and it upgrades it again, run system update and it downgrades it again. Oh, and I really need a third update for the "patch CD", whatever that is... I'm afraid to try as it might downgrade all my packages to the original buggy versions.

Can someone explain to me when you're supposed to use one vs. the other? I have a couple decades experience with computers and am apparently not stupid enough to understand what YaST is trying to tell me to do.

I believe that System Update really just brings your system to match the most stable snapshot that they have on server X, but online update installs new updates that aren't a part of that snapshot yet. I think.

Just stick with online update, I've found; not sure why it "works" this way but it was really frustrating bouncing between KDE 3.2 and 3.3 so I just left it with Online Update as it was more current stuff.

Sorry for the flame bait (and I'm surprised no one took it) it's just that YaST is so obtuse at times it really frustrates me. I wasn't kidding in another thread when I said YaST makes using the CLI seem easier than the GUI. Here I'm thinking " I need to update my system online" and YaST present me with "system update" and "online update"... d'oh. Maybe it makes more sense in German.

I got the impression that system update is used to update to a new distro version, eg. from 9.2 to 9.3. Since you already have 9.3, which is the latest one, system update isn't of any use to you.

I agree though, that the different update functions need better naming, as well as update source configuration being less a pain in the rear.

System update is for updating from a cd or dvd. In other words, if Novell came out with SUSE 9.4, you could buy the discs and "update" from them. Online update is all you need to do after the initial install.

I've always upgraded by sticking in the new CD and selecting upgrade instead of clean install, but at least I now know what that icon is for. Was a complete mystery to me until 5 seconds ago, and I'm not exactly a newbie. YaST just isn't user friendly.

Great thread, by the way. It has been very helpful to me. I currently have two servers running 9.0 and have never done a System Update. I'm quite okay sticking with 9.0 and just running Online Update.

However, I have been downloading packages from ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/suse/i386/9.1 (I mistakenly thought I was running 9.1) and have had no problems... yet. I tried switching my install source to the same location, but with the 9.0 directory on the end and got a bunch of dependancy requirements presented to me when I attempted to install perl-TermReadKey. I switched my ftp install source back to the 9.1 directory and was able to install it w/o resolving any dependancies.

As mentioned above, I have had no problems yet, but will I eventually run into problems if I keep downloading any packages for 9.1?

Thanks for any help!

- Gavin