I just installed and configure fc3 as a webserver (with PHP, Mysql, ODBC, & Apache)

Initially, I was running php4 by default. But because some functions are only available to php5, I decided to upgrade php4 to php5. After the upgrade, I've to spent extra time again to reconfigure the php.ini file (eg. change the max post limit, etc etc etc).

My questions are...

1) What make you decide what to update? For example, when you run YUM, there's tons of update packages. Do I really need them all?

2) Does it really worth the time to update packages and reconfigure everything again?

3) How can I tell which packages are security fixes?


Do you have an update strategy ? I could really like to hear about it

Sign up for the mailing lists. You'll get emails of the security updates that way. One of the great things about yum is the dependency resolution. Just do a yum remove WHATEVER, and if there are packages that depend on it, yum will ask you if you want to remove the dependencies as well.

If you don't want the package you're trying to remove, nor the dependencies, then go for it!

As far as upgrades, you shouldn't lose your config files. The packages will be installed (after the old one is removed) and the new package config file will be saved as WHATEVER.rpmnew

When I want to upgrade a Fedora Core system, I just do I then look at what it wants to update and tell it yes if I want to update, or no if it's updating packages I don't want updated. It's pretty straight forward, thankfully.

For the last question: DEFINITELY if you're running an exposed service. For the others, it depends on the changes. If it is security related I'd suggest it. If it's just a feature update, you decide.

The mailing lists are well worth joining (announcement one anyway) so you will know what the update is about.

can you point me to some of the most "useful" mailing list ?

thanks

http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/communicate/

Definately get on http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listin...-announce-list

Those should do the trick.

yum only updates what you have installed on your system, so if you are running your system as a server, make sure you just have the server software you need and it's dependencies installed. This will save you time and effort coz you won't have unnecessary packages installed on your system.