I have a bunch of Suse-based systems that I'd like to keep in synch with online updates. But... what I'd like to do is do an update on one system -- the "master" -- and use the patches downloaded for that system as a source for patching the other systems. The goal is to reduce internet bandwidth. Currently, our fairly low bandwidth connection is almost completely useless for others to use while a system is downloading patches. As of now, I'm lucky to be able to patch a single system a night since I have to wait until no other internet use is needed.

Surely there's a way to save the RPM files downloaded and make them available for use on other systems on the LAN. Right? If so, how does one set up a system to retain the RPM files and, then, how would you configure other systems to go after those local files?

TIA...

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Rick

If you are updating a number of systems you might want to consider using a personal mirror of the update sources you use.

I have a portable 80 GB hard drive I use for this since I don't have high speed at home. I update it at work off our network with rsync, then take it home. All you have to do is add the mirror as a file source in Yast. There should be a way to set something like that up on a cron job for the rsync off the network, then make the mounted drive visable on the network. Then all you should have to do is run online update on each machine, with that mounted directory as source.

The Suse updates for 10.2 are somewhere between 6 - 8 GB. The first rsync session will be the longest, then those following will only transfer the changed files.

Hope this helps.

That might be overkill since there are some packages that I'll likely never load onto a system.

That's the process I was hoping to follow. Populating that NFS-available filesystem has been the sticky part.

I might consider the rsync idea though I doubt I want to have schlepp a hard disk back and forth between home and work. Every. time. there's. a. patch. But I suppose doing that once followed by updates brought home on a USB thumbdrive might work.

I ran across another post that asked the question about where the RPMs are stored on the disk when Online Update is running. You can -- via a checkbox -- choose to retain those files instead of deleting them onve they've been used. The original poster was asking where they got stashed but I never saw an answer to that question. I'd think it ought to be easy enough to figure out if you do a quick census of the files on the system before and after an update and do a litle manipulation of the lists with diff or sort and uniq.

I 'm hoping that I can save a ton of bandwidth (luckily, I'm not charged for volume) and, even more importantly, time if I can cobble a solution together to do this.

Thanks again...