Aloha-
I am very fond of my slackware 9.1 box and being a perpetual newbie I wanted to know what was the best way to make sure I properly up date my distro and my applications. I fear that because I am still learning abut linux that I may leave myself open to vaulnerabilities.
Thanks for the help
dag33k

swaret is a good tool for your needs.

www.swaret.org

change the swaret.conf to VERSION=current and you are set for the latest in the current mirrors. If you are gunho enough, comment out EXCLUDE on kernel for an kernel upgrade, current kernel is 2.4.25, 9.1 is having 2.4.22. back up your important data before you are going for a major upgrade, good luck.

Thanks for the link I will check it out. If anyone else has any suggestions please let me know.
dag33k

Do remember that swaret will not update all packages! (for good reasons) So you will need to check for updates like kernels or glibc on your own. The security page on slackware.com is the site you need to check. Or subscibe yourself to the security mailinglist. This way you will never miss updates.

Thanks Justin for the heads up.

when installing swaret, go to
pico /etc/swaret.conf.new

and change the line
VERSION=9.1
to
VERSION=current

Save it as swaret.conf . This will update your slack to the latest package.

Also if you want to update the kernel, and lilo, you should go down in that file
and disable the Exclude line (put a # before it)
EXCLUDE kernel
EXCLUDE lilo swaret

If you do so, and update your kernel and or lilo, MAKE SURE to type
lilo
before you reboot, so that everything gets updated. otherwise you wont be able to boot back into your system.

Again Thanks

I love this forum. :blushing:

dag33k

Also be aware that if the name of a pacakage changes (elflib -> aaa_elflibs) swaret will not update them, if a new package is added that was not there before, it will not install them (unless told to specifically). This could leave you unstable. You should read the change logs to see what has been changed or added. They are linked from userlocal.org.