zypper dup reinstalls

Hi!

Whenever I run “zypper dup” on our new SLES 12 machines, it reinstalles every installed package. Is that normal?

On 21/04/2015 11:14, christer solskogen wrote:
[color=blue]

Whenever I run “zypper dup” on our new SLES 12 machines, it reinstalles
every installed package. Is that normal?[/color]

No. I just tried it on a test SLES12 server which had 2 outstanding
updates available and it just installed/upgraded the 7 packages relating
to those updates.

What do “zypper lu” and “zypper lu -t patch” show for these machines?
All the installed packages or just the available updates?

I’m wondering if you have multiple repos configured offering the same
packages. What does “zypper ca” report? For a particular installed
package it wants to reinstall what does “zypper se -s
<already_installed_package” find?

HTH.

Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner


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zmainframe2:~ # zypper lu
Refreshing service ‘spacewalk’.
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
No updates found.
zmainframe2:~ # zypper lu -t patch
Refreshing service ‘spacewalk’.
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
No updates found.

zmainframe2:~ # zypper ca

| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh

–±--------------------------------------------±--------------------------------------±--------±-------
1 | spacewalk:sle-manager-tools12-pool-s390x | SLE-Manager-Tools12-Pool s390x | Yes | Yes
2 | spacewalk:sle-manager-tools12-updates-s390x | SLE-Manager-Tools12-Updates s390x | Yes | Yes
3 | spacewalk:sle-module-legacy12-pool-s390x | SLE-Module-Legacy12-Pool for s390x | Yes | Yes
4 | spacewalk:sle-module-legacy12-updates-s390x | SLE-Module-Legacy12-Updates for s390x | Yes | Yes
5 | spacewalk:sles12-pool-s390x | SLES12-Pool for s390x | Yes | Yes
6 | spacewalk:sles12-updates-s390x | SLES12-Updates for s390x | Yes | Yes
7 | susemanager-client-setup | susemanager-client-setup | No | Yes

zmainframe2:~ # zypper se -s yast2-samba-client
Refreshing service ‘spacewalk’.
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…

S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
–±-------------------±--------±------------±-------±---------------------
i | yast2-samba-client | package | 3.1.13-1.11 | noarch | (System Packages)
v | yast2-samba-client | package | 3.1.13-1.11 | noarch | SLES12-Pool for s390x

This is a virtual machine on s390x (running in z/VM)

Tangentially, I’m curious why are you running ‘zypper dup’ and wondering whether you actually want to be using ‘zypper up’. ‘dup’ short for ‘dist-upgrade’ and intended for upgrading from one version of a distro to another. There’s not yet a newer version of SLES 12 to upgrade to. ‘dup’ is not something I’d expect anyone to regularly use, your original post suggests you are running it repeatedly (’“Whenever I run…”).

[QUOTE]NOTE: Differences between zypper update and zypper dist-upgrade

Choose zypper update to update packages to newer versions available for your product version while maintaining system integrity. zypper update will honor the following rules:

no vendor changes
no architecture changes
no downgrades
keep installed packages

When executing zypper dist-upgrade, all packages will be installed from the repositories currently enabled. This rule is enforced, so packages might change vendor or architecture or even might get downgraded. All packages that have unfulfilled dependencies after the upgrade will be uninstalled. [/QUOTE]
That’s taken from SLES 11 documentation at
https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles11/book_sle_admin/data/sec_zypper.html
I can’t find that useful explanation in the equivalent SLES 12 documentation
https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles-12/book_sle_admin/data/sec_zypper.html

Hi
I see the same on my test system manager by SUSE Manager, I would say
it’s a bug between zypper and spacewalkwith respect to the expectation
is updates are pushed from SUSE Manager, rather than pulled.

Even though dup is an option, in normal use it’s not needed,


Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
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Am 2015-04-22 um 13:04 schrieb christer solskogen:[color=blue]

S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
–±-------------------±--------±------------±-------±---------------------
i | yast2-samba-client | package | 3.1.13-1.11 | noarch | (System
Packages)
v | yast2-samba-client | package | 3.1.13-1.11 | noarch | SLES12-Pool
for s390x[/color]

Seeing “(System Packages)” in zypper usually means that zypper lost
track of of the package source. I didn’t use SLES12 yet, but up to
SLES11SP3 it happens when:

  1. you installed a local package manually with zypper or rpm

  2. the repository the package was installed from is gone (happens often
    with OBS when you switch from SLES11_SP2 to SLES11_SP3 for example),
    meaning that you should reinstall the package from the available
    repositories if you want to keep seeing updates listed with “zypper
    lu”/“zypper lp”

  3. after a major upgrade like SLES10->SLES11 often packages are missed
    to be uninstalled, leaving them as orphans on your system

So for housekeeping purposes I issue a "zypper se -s |grep ‘System Pa’
" from time to time and clean my systems according to the acquired
information.

Franz

Hi Franz!

What do you mean by house keeping? “zypper dup” reinstalls every package each time I run them. They are still counted as System Package.
But yes, I do run SuSE Manager, and that might have something to do with it. I just don’t see that on SLES 11(sp3)

Hi Christer,

well, in my case (SLES11SP3 and OES11SP2) I regularly check for “System
Packages”, especially before and after distribution upgrades. After a
few upgrades more and more no longer used packages pile up (OES2 →
OES11 was quite bad for example), which can even have a bad effect on
further upgrades (dependency problems). For OBS repositories on the
other hand I want to make sure that after I switch a repository path
(SLES11_SP2 → SLES11_SP3), I still get the updates listed and applied
when I use the -r switch of zypper. Updates won’t happen automatically
if zypper thinks a package doesn’t belong to that repository (even
though the names match).

That’s what I mean with “house-keeping” :-). But certainly this won’t
work if zypper lost track of the repository for all the packages like in
your case. I’ll have to keep an eye on that for SLES12.

Franz.

Am 2015-05-07 um 10:14 schrieb christer solskogen:[color=blue]

Hi Franz!

What do you mean by house keeping? “zypper dup” reinstalls every package
each time I run them. They are still counted as System Package.
But yes, I do run SuSE Manager, and that might have something to do with
it. I just don’t see that on SLES 11(sp3)

[/color]