I'm running CentOS 4.2 and Fedora Core 4 on two different
Linux servers and was using "yum check-update' in a cron job
to check for updates (on each machine).

It's been indicating no updates for a while now, so I ran
"yum update" as a sanity check, and it found several packages
that needed updating.

After running "yum update" (but not actually performing the
update), I ran "yum check-update" again, and now it shows
there are updates available.

Why did check-update not show any updates until after I ran
"yum update"? Was it working on the cached info and not going
to the server to check for updates? I can't imagine that would
be the case, otherwise, what good is it?

I was running "yum check-update" as a non-root user. After I
kicked it (using "yum update"), I was able to run "yum
check-update" as a non root user and it showed the updates,
so I don't think that was the problem.

Here is my /etc/yum.conf file, in case it helps:

[main]
cachedir=/usr2/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=centos-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
retries=20
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=0

Thanks,

How and where yum checks updates for CentOS has changed since 4.2 was released. FC4 updates have changed location when FC4 was passed onto legacy mode. Do yourself a favor or two and bring you yum configurations current and check-up with both a bit more often.

For CentOS4 use the yum repo file found here;
http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos...ntOS-Base.repo

For FC4 update the yum configuration to use the legacy site here;
http://www.fedoralegacy.org/

http://www.centos.org/ see the New update system for CentOS-4 link
FC4 was moved to legacy status when FC6rc1 was released in June, 2006

Thanks. My CentOS-Base.repo is identical to this file, so I
think I'm up to date there.

Here I'm a little confused. I didn't find a yum config file
at that site. Can you please help me a little more with
that one?

So I'm not sure that this explains what I was seeing, does
it? When I ran "yum update-check", it said there were no
updates, but when I ran "yum update", it found many
updates. Also, after I ran "yum update" (and declined to
install the updates) I ran "yum check-update" again and
it now found the updates.

Thanks again,

Get the key for Fedora Legacy; http://www.fedoralegacy.org/about/security.php

From http://www.fedoralegacy.org/download/

If you're using yum on Fedora Core, please add the following blocks to your/etc/yum.conf:

[base]
gpgcheck=1
name=Fedora Core $releasever base
baseurl=http://download.fedoralegacy.org/fedora/$releasever/os/$basearch

[updates]
gpgcheck=1
name=Fedora Core $releasever updates
baseurl=http://download.fedoralegacy.org/fedora/$releasever/updates/$basearch

[legacy-utils]
gpgcheck=1
name=Fedora Legacy utilities for Fedora Core $releasever
baseurl=http://download.fedoralegacy.org/fedora/$releasever/legacy-utils/$basearch

If you are already using another repository for official Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core packages and updates, please note the following:

* You only need one repository providing the "base" (aka "os") channel. If you already have a repository providing it, you may want to keep only one (either one). The contents of this channels will never change.
* The "updates" channel is the channel used for Fedora Legacy updates. If you already have a repository providing a Red Hat or Fedora Core "updates" channel, make sure that you keep only the "updates" channel from Fedora Legacy and remove that channel from your other repository. Your former "updates" channel will only provided Red Hat or Fedora Core official updates. Your system will NOT receive Fedora Legacy updates if you're using any other "updates" channels providing only official Red Hat or Fedora Core updates!

If I place these in the /etc/yum.conf file, do I remove
all the xxx.repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d? I assume so,
since I get errors about duplicate repositories listed
within the configuration.

I'm having a problem with this last URL. The directory
'legacy-utils' doesn't exist under /fedora/4/, and after
looking around a bit, I can't find it.


Thanks again for your help.

By the way, is it expected that this will solve my original
problem - that of the "yum check-update" not showing any
updates when "yum update" does?

After looking a bit more, it seems that the legacy-utils
repository is not available for Fedora Core 4, which is
what I'm running. I commented that repository out of my
yum.conf file, and yum completes successfully.

Is it acceptable that my yum.conf file includes only the
"base" and "updates" repositories? Those appear to be the
only two repositories available on the site.

I'm still hoping for help with this.

Thanks,

Sorry I cannot answer as to why 'yum check-update' does not work for you. I did a simple test as a check and it works as expected;

$ sudo yum check-update
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up repositories
core 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
rhel-media 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
base 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00
updates 100% |=========================| 1.2 kB 00:00
addons 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.0 MB 00:08
################################################## 2931/2931
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 1.0 MB 00:00
################################################## 2942/2942
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 657 kB 00:05
################################################## 1703/1703
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 442 kB 00:02
################################################## 1587/1587
primary.xml.gz 100% |=========================| 157 B 00:00
Excluding Packages in global exclude list
Finished

info.x86_64 4.8-14.fc6 updates

I'm using; yum-3.0.1-2.fc6.noarch.rpm
$ cat /etc/*release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client release 4.92 (Tikanga)
which is RHEL5Beta2

As a suggestion try running; yum clean all

.

Thanks - that is the problem I'm having. I'd run the check-update for weeks (months?) and no updates.

Then, when I ran "yum update", it found updates. When I ran the check-update command again, it too saw the updates.

It was as if the "yum update" shook something loose and it was able to detect the updates.

I've run "yum clean all" and will have to watch it to see if it has the same problem again.

If anyone has any reason why it might be doing this, I would be most grateful for some pointers.

Best Regards,