Bug 267390

Summary:	Display patch application history in "yast2 online_update" and dedicated log file
Product:	[openSUSE] openSUSE 10.2	Reporter:	Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn>
Component:	YaST2	Assignee:	E-mail List <yast2-maintainers>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jiri Srain <jsrain>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Markus Kuhn 2007-04-24 09:18:52 UTC

Sometimes, an openSUSE installation breaks without apparent cause, and in the following detective work to figure out what went wrong, the automatically installed patches often become a prime suspect. Often, I know exactly at which date something started to fail, and then it would be good to be able to look up easily which patch was installed at exactly which time. At the moment, that information is unfortunately not easily available to administrators.

Patch-forensics wishlist:

- There should be an easily readable log file that records the installation of patches, which files they affected when, and why.

- In "yast2 online_update", if I click on a package and then on the tab "Versions", I am displayed a list of the previously installed versions of that package. It would be extremely useful to have in that list also a column with the exact date and time at which each new version was installed displayed, such that I can more easily correlate the installation of patches with observed new failures.

Motivation: Last weekend, "korganizer" suddenly broke (hangs before opening a window waiting in a read() for some answer from dcopserver). It worked on Friday and failed on Monday, and all my attempts to reset any persistent state that it might have access to did not solve the problem. What patches got automatically installed over the weekend that might have caused this? When was kdelibs3 last modified on this harddisk? The filesystem timestamps are no good for providing an answer, because they show packaging time rather than local patch application time. I could not find this information easily in either "yast2 online_update" or under /var/log/YaST2/.

Comment 1 Martin Vidner 2007-04-25 13:19:49 UTC

> Patch-forensics wishlist:
> 
> - There should be an easily readable log file that records the installation of
> patches, which files they affected when, and why.

Please try "rpm -qa --last", that should be close enough.

> - In "yast2 online_update", if I click on a package and then on the tab
> "Versions", I am displayed a list of the previously installed versions of that
> package. It would be extremely useful to have in that list also a column with
> the exact date and time at which each new version was installed displayed, such
> that I can more easily correlate the installation of patches with observed new
> failures.

Well no. It does not display a history but rather all the versions in all the repositories that you have configured.

> Motivation: Last weekend, "korganizer" suddenly broke (hangs before opening a
> window waiting in a read() for some answer from dcopserver). It worked on
> Friday and failed on Monday, and all my attempts to reset any persistent state
> that it might have access to did not solve the problem. What patches got
> automatically installed over the weekend that might have caused this? When was
> kdelibs3 last modified on this harddisk?

rpm -q kdelibs3 --qf '%{INSTALLTIME:date}\n'
(see also /usr/share/doc/packages/rpm/manual/queryformat)

> The filesystem timestamps are no good
> for providing an answer, because they show packaging time rather than local
> patch application time. I could not find this information easily in either
> "yast2 online_update" or under /var/log/YaST2/.

I hope that the above commands are enough. Please reopen if you really want better yast support for this.