Re: Safety issues of cronning "apt-get -y upgrade"

[michael@etalon.net]

Quoting "Clinton V. Weiss" <cvweiss@comcast.net>:

> On a stable Debian machine, would cronning
>  apt-get -y upgrade
> (with the apt-get -y update of course) on a daily or weekly basis 
> have any fault points?
>
> I'm asking since I'd like to ensure that upgrading of a server's 
> packages is safe and secure without the need to SSH into the machine 
> just for updates.

Personally, I don't like the -y option unless I know exactly before
hand which packages are upgraded. What if you have a custom conf file
and it overwrites your custom one with the new one?
For example:
Squid and proxy auth.
The woody version and sarge version have different ways of configuring
proxy auth. If you blindly upgraded to sarge, your proxy auth would 
probably be busted.
In most cases, your old conf would probably work just great, or perhaps apt
does a great job of re-creating the new one based on your old settings.
But in the end, on a production server, I like to know exactly whats happening
to a the server during an upgrade. Therefore, I prefer manual upgrades.
Just my opinion.

Cheers,
Mike

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