Updating a standalone machine
 

What is the best way to regularly update a fedora machine that is not connected to the Internet?

Hi.

One way or another you'll need access to the update packages. One way to do this is to download the packages to another server (say, server A) in your network, and set up your Fedora server to use server A as a package repository.

Ken, thanks for responding. I'm looking for a different solution because as I said in the OP the machine is not connected to the Internet so your suggestion is not possible.

My mistake. I figured that your machine did infact have a network card, and were connected to other machines in the network.

Anyways. So your only way of getting data to you machine is via USB-pen, CD/DVD, and such?

Ken,

Yes CD/DVD would be the only option. I know I could go to the update repository and download the RPMs, burn them to DVD, then use the DVD as a local yum repository but I was wondering if there was a more elegant solution.

Well, maybe there are better ways, but since you're limited to DVDs I can't think of other ways of doing this. Did you have some idea of how you'd like to set this up? I mean, since you don't have any networking up and running, you're stuck with doing these things manually.

Consider buying a USB Hard Drive. Depending on the distro you are running, Linux has a LOT of updates every (week/month again depending on distro). Fedora is one of the faster cycling distros (lot of updates every week). Any one version of Fedora is only supported for about 13months and a new version is released about every six months. You really cannot just grab the rpms you want by themselves due to the nature of linux. Any one rpm MAY depend on any number of other rpms in order to function (you have to install the rpm and all of its dependencies in order for it to work) and each of those rpms it requires may also require a number of other rpms (dependencies of its own). In the end it is usually easier (and faster) to just grab all the rpms in the repo (yes, I know this can be 50GB or more). The other way it to go grab the rpm you want, try to install it, find out what it's dependencies are, go back download those rpms and repeat (until you get everything installed). Linux was really designed to have a internet connection readily available.

Yeah, it's going to take a lot of effort updating the system this way. :)

By the way, let me ask you this: Why do you feel that you need to update your system regularly?

If it's not connected to any network it is less likely to be attacked by a cracker. So updating from a security point of view is then maybe less important.

If you need to update because of support for new features, hardware and stuff I think you should consider just downloading the packages you actually need (along with the dependices of course).

@ken

I never said the computer wasn't connected to any network. I said it wasn't connected to the Internet. (It is a common logical fallacy to assume a machine not connected to the Internet is not connected to any network) Thanks for your input.

@laz

Thanks for the suggestions. I will consider that option.