[wplug] A silly question about yum(8)

[Pat Barron]

It's been a while, but I just wanted to circle back on this to mention 
the eventual resolution.

Gary's suggestion was absolutely correct - the package names being 
displayed in bold were already downloaded (and ready for immediate 
installation).  It turns out that this happens because when PackageKit 
checks for updates, it automatically downloads the updates in the 
background before it displays the pop-up informing the user that updates 
are available.  I wasn't seeing this all the time because I normally run 
"yum update" from the command line every couple of days, so typically 
PackageKit doesn't have a chance to do this by itself before I update 
manually.  But if I go a week or so without updating (long enough for 
PackageKit to do it's check) and get the pop-up, and then later run "yum 
update" manually, the updates that PackageKit previously found (and 
already downloaded) are displayed in bold.  Any updates that became 
available after PackageKit ran it's check are not displayed in bold, and 
are downloaded during the update process.  But the packages displayed in 
bold aren't downloaded because they're already in yum's cache, they just 
need to be installed.

Mystery solved.  ;-)

--Pat.

On 2/20/2014 12:31 PM, Pat Barron wrote:
> Thanks for this - I will have to check the package cache next time I see
> this, to determine if that's really what is going on.  I don't run
> yum-updatesd, but I am wondering if maybe PackageKit is downloading
> things behind my back, "for my convenience"....  ;-)
>
> --Pat.
>
> On 2/19/2014 6:24 PM, Gary Pitman wrote:
>> Not sure why it would be already downloaded unless you're running yum-updatesd or whatever it's called these days
>>
>> http://serverfault.com/questions/465528/potential-issues-with-yum-update-rpm
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>> On Feb 19, 2014, at 6:09 PM, Pat Barron <pat at lectroid.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> The interesting thing is, it's not all of the packages that get
>>> displayed in bold type - just a few, and not all the time.
>>>
>>> I think Stanley was on the right track, there are times that yum does
>>> things with package names to make them visually stand out for various
>>> reasons, though the info he posted was with regard to package names
>>> either in bold, or dim, and colorized.  The ones I'm seeing aren't
>>> colorized, just bold.  The man page for "yum.conf" says that bold is the
>>> default for "packages in list/info installed which are older than the
>>> latest available package with the same name and arch".  But, of course -
>>> if you're using "yum update", then all the packages listed are older
>>> than the latest available, that is why we are upgrading them....  I'm
>>> sort of wondering if this is telling me that the upgrade is not from the
>>> most recent previous version, but rather one before that.  (Like, if I
>>> have version "1" of some package, and yum is going to upgrade it to
>>> version "3" - but there was a version "2" in between that was never
>>> installed, and that we're skipping over.)  But I just can't figure it
>>> out from looking at the docs...
>>>
>>> All the packages end up upgrading just fine, so this is really more a
>>> curiosity than anything else....  It just bugs me when I don't
>>> understand what the system is doing....  ;-)
>>>
>>> --Pat.
>>>
>>>> On 2/19/2014 3:48 PM, John Lewis wrote:
>>>> I don't think you are missing anything. The bold type is just to give
>>>> give more attention to the packages about to be updated. Then yum is
>>>> stating the obvious.
>>>>
>>>>> On 02/19/2014 02:15 PM, Pat Barron wrote:
>>>>> This is just bugging me...
>>>>>
>>>>> Sometimes when I run "yum update", and it shows me the list of packages
>>>>> it's planning to update, some of the package names are listed in bold
>>>>> type.  I'm not sure what this means.  The man page seems to say that
>>>>> this indicates a package that is installed that is older than the latest
>>>>> available version - but if I'm doing "yum update", then all of the
>>>>> packages it's going to update are older than the latest available
>>>>> version, that's why it's updating them....
>>>>>
>>>>> What am I missing here?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> --Pat.
>>>>>
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