Atomicorp

I have a dedicated server with CentOS release 5 (Final) and Plesk 8.4.0 CentOS 5 84080514.18.

Set up in /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo are local mirrors of the datacenter for Base, Updates, Addons and Extras. (Plus and Contrib not enabled)


What advantages do I have by adding the Atomic archives?

- ART repo uses the newest packages, CentOS or Plesk does NOT
- ART repo delivers also packages that are NOT in the CentOS repo
- ART repo can also update Plesk packages

Did I forget something?

Yup, you got it. We make a lot of things that you wont find in other repos, specifically for Plesk. Atomic-Yum for example, which is a plesk module as a front end for yum.

Thank you for explaining.

Yes I noticed that a yum update from the CentOS repo was not updating for example PHP to the latest version and I am sure other packages. Why is that? Is it because if CentOS releases for example Version 5.0 they only release up to a certain version number for all packages and then they only do backporting of security updates to that version, but never install a newer version, did I research that right?

So if I would install the ART repo, I would get the actual newer versions of everything. Is that dangerous to do on a production server? I assume it would make back-ups of config files that changed their format?

Is it recommended to install the yum-priorities and yum-protectbase plugins to make sure nothing breaks when using ART repo, like the CentOS wiki explains? If yes, what settings would you recommend?

Do you recommend to not update Plesks packages with the Updater in the Plesk Gui at all and only use the ART Plesk repo? If so what is the advantage of the ART Plesk repo? Will it know what components are installed and will the Plesk Gui show new version numbers if updates were done with yum from the ART Plesk repo?

I went into Plesk 8.4.0 updater settings and added a source under "Sources Of Operating System Updates" as repomd http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/updates/x86_64/ priority normal (500).
Is that a good thing to do?

I will look into the yum gui for Plesk.

I believe centosplus is based on a channel from redhat, but you'd have to ask them specifically.

You should always maintain backups, and research the impact of a major upgrade in advance.

I dont use yum-prorities or protectbase myself, so I will defer to the centos docs on that front. They are probably the best source for reliable yum information out there, I know a lot of the folks involved with centos and they are probably the best in the business.

I prefer updating with yum because it is a more advanced updating system. It can usually get around issues that the plesk updater cannot. The ART plesk repo is just the standard plesk packages distributed through yum. Its the same thing youd get from the updater.

Does Plesk notice if updates trough ART repo, or does Plesk still wants to update. With other words can you use both systems at the same time?

I have no problems anymore updating through yum. That was fixed in 8.3 I think.