When the AutoUpdate facility is enabled, the Realm Linux platform(s) will update themselves each night between 12 am and 7 am. This is extremely useful to the administrator as Red Hat errata are managed centrally and placed into the update tree as they are released and tested. This helps ensure that the Realm Linux system around campus will remain secure and that user data will not be compromised by security vulnerabilities.

Emergency updates are handled through the realm-cron facility; if realm-cron is enabled, the update script will run roughly every four hours during the day. When the realm-cron update script runs, it will install any emergency updates placed into AFS by ITD or college or departmental personnel.

Realm Linux versions based off of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will, by default, ignore updates to the kernel and OpenAFS packages. This helps keep a consistant set of packages on the machine as I cannot control when a new kernel will be available to instantly have new OpenAFS packages for that kernel. Upgrading kernels and OpenAFS is still an important process of maintaining Realm Linux machines. When you see an announcement for a new set of kernel and OpenAFS packages you can update them by running up2date manually and selecting those packages from the graphical user interface. Or you can do it scriptually with the following command.

/usr/bin/up2date -u -f --nox

If you need to install an extra kernel or OpenAFS package on your system that's not normally installed, you will also have to use the -f option to force up2date to override its skiplist. For example, to install the kernel-source package the command you would use is below.

/usr/bin/up2date -f -i kernel-source