fou4s - Fast OnlineUpdate for SuSE Copyright (C) 2002 Markus Gaugusch Features: ========= * Tested with SuSE 7.1 to 8.0 (automatic release detection) * SuSE Email Server II and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLE) should be supported at least partially. Fou4s is using update files for the SuSE release they are based on (e.g. 7.0 for Email Server II). You still have to get updates for specific software, like IMP on your own. * Fou4s gets the package descriptions from FTP server (Can be set in /etc/fou4s, or using the --server option). This is on demand only and not every time. Only changed/new package descriptions are actually downloaded. HTTP servers are supported, too. * Fou4s compares downloaded description files with installed RPMs and prints differences (Version number). Full automatic update is supported as well. * Support for external http URLs (e.g. NVidia drivers) * Downloads and installs the RPMs using wget (with continue option - aborted downloads will be resumed) * Everything except real upgrade can be done as normal user. (if the RPM and package description directory are writeable by the user) * Signature checking - Non-SuSE packages will be rejected (with the exception of fou4s updates) * Runs SuSEconfig after an update (can be turned off) * FTP and HTTP Server proxy support!! (using environment variables http_proxy and ftp_proxy, which are used by wget then) * FTP benchmark utility included (written by Guenther Sommer ) with support for auto-benchmarking to select fastest ftp server. Known Bugs/Missing features: ============================ * Package description on the ftp server are in update/patches/* and update/patches.cont/* - the patches.cont directory exists only in 7.3, but we check it for >=7.3 (for safety), which gives a small error when updating the package descriptions. This is harmless, though. The option --nocont disables checking for the patches.cont directory entirely. There is also a PatchesCont option in the configfile * Some servers download additional files in http mode (e.g. gd.tuwien.ac.at) Despite a bunch of wget options I cannot circumvent this. These additionally downloaded files don't really harm, but are annoying. * There seems to be a bug in wget, returning 0 (ok) as return value, if the -r (recursive) option is specified. Fou4s uses -r only for http servers, where it is necessary, so there is no "Download failed" message, if something wrong happens with a http server, or when using a http proxy for ftp downloads. * Download of package descriptions from a an ftp server using a http proxy seems to be broken. It seems that wget doesn't do recursive retrieval, if a proxy is activated. Documentation ============= Except from this README and the web page, there are two manual pages: fou4s(1) and fou4s.conf(5). Of course, the shell script fou4s itself is documented, too. But don't expect too much :) Screenshot ========== fou4s v0.6.0 (c) 2002 Markus Gaugusch usage: fou4s -u [-b] [-q] [-v] [--checkfou4s] [--nocont] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s -e [-b] [-d] [-o] [-s] [-v] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s --auto [-n] [-o] [-s] [-v] fou4s -i [-a] [-b] [-c] [-d] [-f file] [-g] [--interactive] [-n] [--nodeps] [-o] [-r] [-s] [-v] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s -l [-o] [-s] fou4s --server [-v] [-w] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] Type fou4s --help for more information. See the manual page fou4s(1) for detailed help. Download ======== You can get fou4s at http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ The tar.bz2 file can be used to create an RPM package: rpm --target noarch -bb fou4s-0.x.y.tar.bz2 The RPM file is stored in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/noarch/fou4s-0.x.y-z.noarch.rpm I RECOMMEND EVERYONE TO USE RPM, because it comes with a good configuration file, and everything is preconfigured. You can also use the Makefile and do "make install" yourself, but there is no uninstall. Config File =========== The following files are tried to be used as a config file: ./.fou4s # this has the highest priority and is the default ~/.fou4s /etc/fou4s.conf It is automatically created, if none is found and you use the --server option to select another server. See the manual page fou4s.conf(5) for more information about the config file. Quick Start =========== RPM version: rpm -Uvh fou4s-0.x.y-z.noarch.rpm fou4s --server # select ftp server (not necessary, default: ftp.gwdg.de) fou4s -u --checkfou4s # get update description files for suse and fou4s fou4s -ev # check for updates, but no download/install (evaluation) fou4s -i # download and install all available updates tar.bz2 version: tar --bzip2 -xvf fou4s-0.x.y.tar.bz2 cd fou4s-0.x.y ./fou4s --server ./fou4s -u --checkfou4s ./fou4s -ev ./fou4s -i Note: On SuSE >= 8.0, tar xIvf doesn't work anymore, you have to use xjvf. The --bzip2 option is universal. Try as non-root first, if you are unsure what happens. If you use the RPM version, the user must have write permissions in /var/cache/fou4s/*. Beginning with version 0.4, members of the group fou4s (automatically created during RPM installation) are allowed to write there. Contributions/Thanks ==================== Thanks to Christian Erpelding for some enhancements to 0.0.1 - I had most of them already in mind, but it's good to know, what other people want :) Thanks to Kilian Krause for beta testing 0.0.3 and some suggestions for functionality. Thanks to Guenther Sommer for the ftp-benchmark utility contributed to 0.1.0. Thanks to Gottfried Necker , who sent me a patch fixing UseFullPath in 0.4.1. And finally, thanks to the following people, who contributed by suggesting new features or reporting bugs (no particular order): Steffen Dettmer Bernhard Held Peter Suetterlin Bernd Krüger-Knauber René Gallati Alexander Reach Anatol Studler Manfred Larcher Michael T Hintsala Kevin Ivory Robert C. Paulsen Jr. Contact ======= http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ Markus Gaugusch