Chapter Summary

As a system administrator, you need to keep applications and system software current. Of the many reasons to keep the software on a system up-to-date, one of the most important is system security. The development of rpm packages has made the process of adding and removing the software packages quite easy.

On Fedora Core systems, you can use yum to install and upgrade software packages. The yum utility is installed by default and is easy to configure and use.

In addition, you can use the rpm utility to install, uninstall, upgrade, query, and verify rpm packages. For packages distributed as source code, the GNU Configure and Build System makes it easy to build executable files.

BitTorrent is a handy tool for downloading large static data files such as the Fedora installation ISO images. BitTorrent can replace protocols such as anonymous FTP, where client authentication is not required.

Red Hat Network (RHN), a service provided by Red Hat, is an Internet-based system that can keep the software on one or more Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems up-to-date.