fou4s - Fast OnlineUpdate for SuSE Copyright (C) 2002 Markus Gaugusch Features: ========= * Tested with 6.4 and 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 ) Bugs/Missing features: ====================== * Update descriptions are very ugly - The text in the package descriptions is so badly formatted, that I should do some pretty printing to make it user-friendly readable. * 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. * Some servers download additional files in http mode (gd.tuwien.ac.at) Despite a bunch of wget options I could not circumvent this. These additional 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. Documentation ============= Except from this README and the web page, there are two manual pages: fou4s(1) and fou4s(5). Use "man 1 fou4s" or "man 5 fou4s" to view them. Of course, the shell script fou4s itself is documented, too. But don't expect too much :) Screenshot ========== fou4s v0.3.0 (c) 2002 Markus Gaugusch usage: fou4s -u [-b] [-q] [-v] [--checkfou4s] [--nocont] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s -i [-a] [-b] [-c] [-d] [-f file] [-g] [--interactive] [-n] [--nodeps] [-o] [-r] [-s] [-v] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s -e [-b] [-d] [-o] [-s] [-v] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] fou4s -l [-o] [-s] fou4s --server [-v] [-w] [--proxyuser] [--proxypasswd] Type fou4s --help for more information. 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-0.3.0.tar.bz2 The RPM file is stored in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/noarch/fou4s-0.3.0-1.noarch.rpm I recommend everyone to use the 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 It is automatically created, if you use the --server option to select another server. See the manual page fou4s(5) for more information: man 5 fou4s Quick Start =========== tar.bz2 version: tar --bzip2 -xvf fou4s-0.3.0.tar.bz2 cd fou4s-0.3.0 ./fou4s --server # select ftp server ./fou4s -u --checkfou4s # update package descriptions (also check for new fou4s) ./fou4s -e # check for updates, but no download/install (evaluation) ./fou4s -i # install all available updates Note: On SuSE >= 8.0, tar xIvf doesn't work anymore, you have to use xjvf. The --bzip2 option is universal. RPM version: rpm -ivh fou4s-0.3.0-1.i386.rpm /usr/sbin/fou4s --server /usr/sbin/fou4s -u --checkfou4s /usr/sbin/fou4s -e /usr/sbin/fou4s -i 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/* 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. 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 Contact ======= http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ Markus Gaugusch