Question about locking packages

[Thomas Röhl]

Hi @ all,

Gustavo Niemeyer wrote:
>> "We" is the Linux-Department of the University Erlangen-Nürnberg. We 
>> have changed almost all servers and clients to smart running SLES9, 
>> SLES10, OpenSuSE 10.0 and openSuSE 10.1.
>>     
>
> Nice!  How many servers are you currently managing there?
>
>   
I think something about 60. But we also have some Clusters and some Xen 
DomUs running on Linux which are not counted here.
>> "When you lock a package you're asking Smart not to allow these packages 
>> to be changed. If you want to change these packages all you have to do 
>> is unlocking them"
>>
>> Jop, thats right and thats what we need because we want to lock the 
>> kernel and than install the kernel in a scheduled order through cfengine.
>>     
>
> Ah, cfengine. It has a quite interesting concept.
>
>   
>> The "soft lock" idea is exactly what we need. If a package is softlocked 
>> than the upgrade process simply writes out the problem at the end and 
>> will not upgrade all the packages. (Like apt: Kept back: 1) We automated 
>> all the smart-stuff an get Emails for every host with their update-status.
>>     
>
> Humm.. isn't that what locks currently do?  If that's the behavior you
> want, soft locks the way I was thinking wouldn't help. Perhaps you're
> looking for a --ignore-locks flag indeed.
>
>   
This was my first thought, too. But the option --ignore-locks ist doing 
nothing in this case.

Here is my output:

linux: # smart flag --show lock          
lock
    kernel-smp

linux: # smart --ignore-locks reinstall kernel-smp
Loading cache...
Updating cache...                  
############################################# [100%]

Computing 
transaction...                                                                

error: Can't reinstall kernel-smp-2.6.13-15.11 at i586: it's locked

I tried the --ignore-locks after the whole command and in the middle, 
nothing changes.
The option ignore-locks would be exactly the option I would need when it 
would really ignore the locks.
No interesting upgrades available.
When I upgrade all packages including the new kernel, I only get "No 
interesting upgrades available." which is not true, there are 
interesting upgrades but they are locked.

Is there a possibility to get this output?
linux: # smart upgrade
Loading cache...
Updating cache...                  
############################################# [100%]

Computing transaction...
New, but locked packages: kernel-smp

The only option, I see, is to read all packages with the new flag and 
compare them with the locked ones.
Other, better possibilities?

MFG
Thomas Röhl