What is the difference between yum updateinfo list available/all?

Latest response

Hello folks,

I'm somewhat confused about the difference in the following to commands. From yum(8):

updateinfo
[...]
yum updateinfo list [all | available | installed | updates]
[...]
which all display information about the available update infor-
mation relevant to your machine (including anything installed, if you supply "all").
[...]
* available Is used to display information about advisories for
packages available for updating or installation.
* all Is used to display information about both installed and
available advisories.

So available shows information for packages whether they are installed or not. Because it says "available for updating or installation." For me that sounds like the same as in the option all.

But the two opitions show different results:

# yum updateinfo list available | wc -l
19148
# yum updateinfo list all | wc -l
20473

Could someone explain the difference between the to options to me, please?

Regards,
Joerg

Responses

Hi Jörg,

I did some research, and I think that I found the difference here -> https://access.redhat.com/solutions/10021
sudo yum updateinfo list available lists all packages which have Errata Bug Fix and Security Advisories.
sudo yum updateinfo list all lists all packages (with and without Errata Bug Fix and Security Advisories).
This explains the higher number of packages - included are the ones that have only feature or version updates.

Cheers :)
Christian

Update : Some further research lead to the result that the information given above needs to be corrected.
sudo yum updateinfo list all is used to display information about installed and available advisories.
sudo yum updateinfo list available is used to display information about just available advisories.
sudo yum updateinfo list installed is used to display information about just installed advisories.

Christian

Good Morning Christian,

Thanks for your response. To make sure that I got it rhight this time I like to repeat the documentation in my own words. It would be nice if you or somebody else could check and correct me if I'm wrong.

  • updates shows advisories for packages already installed on a specific machine which can be updated
  • installed shows the advisories which are already installed on a specific machine
  • available shows all packages with erratas whether they are installed or not; But is it only for bugfix and security erratas and not for enhancement advisories?
  • all shows all updates whether they are documented in any advisories or not; But are there any updates which are not included in any advisory (security, bufix, enhancement)?

Thanks in advance for your response.

Cheers, Jörg

Hi Jörg,

I just want to inform you that I have updated the information in my first reply.
Other users reading our discussion may benefit, because it is more clear now.

Regards,
Christian

Hi Jörg,

Yes, exactly that ! :) You understood it correctly and summed it up perfectly, just one little tiny thing :
What you call "enhancement advisories" are feature or version updates for packages like LibreOffice.

Regards,
Christian

Hi Christian,

Let's stay by this little tiny thing for a while. ;-)

With "enhancement advisories" I mean everything that is included in some RHEA-XXXX:YYYY which is some kind of advisory from my point of view. But there are RHEA-advisories in yum updateinfo list available.

So, are there any kind of updates which are not referenced by some kind of RHBA, RHSA or RHEA? I think not, because I did not found any other in yum updateinfo list all.

Or is all just the sum of available and installed? But on my test system this did not match:

[root@rhel-t2 ~]# yum updateinfo list available | wc -l
7580
[root@rhel-t2 ~]# yum updateinfo list installed | wc -l
1960
[root@rhel-t2 ~]# yum updateinfo list all | wc -l
9538

Regards,

Jörg

Hi Jörg,

What you can do to find it out exactly, is to execute both commands, copy the output from each of them into a separate .txt file and compare the content of those two files with a tool like meld ... then you'll know the difference between the packages shown in list all and list available.

Regards,
Christian

Well, the sum of list availalbe and list installed seems to be the output of list all. I forgot to think about the headline and footline in the output. It's Monday....

Thanks for your help, Jörg

You're welcome Jörg ! :) Well, that makes sense - it's matching man yum.
But you were right to be confused, it indeed is somewhat a bit confusing.

Cheers :)
Christian

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