SM3: Performing patch update except for certain packages

Is there an easy way to apply all packages but make exceptions for certain packages? A package exception list as it were? I don’t see anything when clicking on the system name that would allow such an exception list.

One possibility is to clone a channel and it’s assorted child channels and manually remove the exception packages from the cloned channel (pool and updates). Then, whenever it was time to upgrade the system to the latest available patches, sync the cloned channels with their origin channels and then, once again, manually remove the package exceptions. If there was a way to apply updates to these cloned channels in the same way the origins were updates, that would avoid this manual sync process which would be nice.

On Fri, 07 Apr 2017 20:04:02 +0000, achinayoung waubonsee wrote:
[color=blue]

Is there an easy way to apply all packages but make exceptions for
certain packages? A package exception list as it were? I don’t see
anything when clicking on the system name that would allow such an
exception list.[/color]

Not that I know of, no. That would be nice, though. I went a couple of
months of forcing the Salt and Salt-Minion packages to not be upgraded,
because the older version worked better than the latest.

[color=blue]

One possibility is to clone a channel and it’s assorted child channels
and manually remove the exception packages from the cloned channel (pool
and updates). Then, whenever it was time to upgrade the system to the
latest available patches, sync the cloned channels with their origin
channels and then, once again, manually remove the package exceptions.
If there was a way to apply updates to these cloned channels in the same
way the origins were updates, that would avoid this manual sync process
which would be nice.[/color]

I wonder if that could be scripted.


David Gersic
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[QUOTE=dgersic;37420]On Fri, 07 Apr 2017 20:04:02 +0000, achinayoung waubonsee wrote:
[color=blue]

One possibility is to clone a channel and it’s assorted child channels
and manually remove the exception packages from the cloned channel (pool
and updates). Then, whenever it was time to upgrade the system to the
latest available patches, sync the cloned channels with their origin
channels and then, once again, manually remove the package exceptions.
If there was a way to apply updates to these cloned channels in the same
way the origins were updates, that would avoid this manual sync process
which would be nice.[/color]

I wonder if that could be scripted.
[/QUOTE]

I am sure it could be. According to the Advanced Topics manual, “Manage almost all aspects of SUSE Manager from the command line with spacecmd”. You cannot do it easily with the GUI. I created the cloned channel, removed the packages I was not interested in, and waited for some updates to see if I could sync entirely from the GUI without having to go back and remove the packages I was not interested in again. Not possible. Channels->Manage Software Channels->[Channel]->Packages->Compare only allows you to sync 100% with the old channel (useless when you want package exceptions), add missing packages to the cloned channel (allows you to specify which packages to add to the cloned channel but this is too manual a process after you have already removed packages from the cloned channel), and remove extra packages from cloned channel (none exist). Sigh.