fou4s - Fast OnlineUpdate for SuSE
Copyright (C) 2002 Markus Gaugusch <fou4s@gaugusch.at>

Features:
=========

* Tested with 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 (automatic release detection)
* Gets the package descriptions from ftp server (currently hardcoded to
  ftp.gwdg.de, but you can change this in the script). This is on demand
  only and not every time. Only changed/new package descriptions are
  actually downloaded.
* Compares downloaded description files with installed RPMs and prints
  differences (Version number)
* Support for external http URLs (e.g. NVidia drivers)
* Downloads and installs the RPMs using wget (with continue option -
  aborted downloads will be resumed)
* Everything except real upgrade can be done as normal user.
* Signature checking - Non-SuSE packages will be rejected
* Optionally runs SuSEconfig after an update


Bugs/Missing features:
======================

* Package descriptions can't be downloaded with set ftp_proxy (is unset
  automatically)
* Update descriptions are very ugly - The text in the package descriptions
  is so badly formatted, that I should do some pretty printing to make it 
  user-friendly readable.
* Package description update tries to get update/patches/* and
  update/patches.cont/* - the patches.cont directory does not exist for
  every distribution version (e.g. 7.1), but for others it contains most
  of the packages (7.3)
  You will therefore get a harmless error during package list retrieval.
* If the package and packagelist directories are relative paths (default),
  then change to the directory containing them, if you are running a cron-job.
* Cross-dependend updates cannot be processed (like the samba/smbclnt update
  on SuSE 7.1)
* Dependencies are not checked (this is only bad if a new version has new
  dependencies)


Screenshot
==========

fou4s@phoenix:~/fou/fou4s-0.0.2> ./fou4s --help
fou4s v0.0.2  (c) 2002 Markus Gaugusch <fou4s@gaugusch.at>

fou4s is licensed GNU GPL and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. See the GNU GPL
 for details!

usage:
fou4s [options]

options:
-u, update       Get new package list from FTP server and exit
-i, upgrade      Compare package list with RPM db and get/install packages
donothing        Compare package list with RPM db and do nothing else
                 (for testing)
-c               Run SuSEconfig after update (requires upgrade option)
-g               Skip GPG signature verification
-h, --help, -?   Show this help screen
-n               Do not attempt to download RPM files
-o               Skip optional packages (install everything else)
-r               Remove downloaded packages after successful update
-s               Only install security updates (nothing else)
-v               Verbose mode (twice for other effect)
--interactive    Interactive mode (ask for each package)


Download
========

You can get fou4s at http://www.gaugusch.at/fou4s


Quick Start
===========

tar xIvf fou4s-0.0.2.tar.bz2
cd fou4s-0.0.2
./fou4s -u
./fou4s donothing -v
./fou4s -i -c        # (cross your fingers, if you are root ;)

Try as non-root first, if you are unsure what happens. Package comparison
takes its time!! Be patient. On my machine it takes about 50 seconds to
check all packages (without any downloads).


Contributions/Thanks
====================

Thanks to Christian Erpelding <che@ce-data.de> for some enhancements to 0.0.1 -
I had most of them already in mind, but it's good to know, what other people 
want :)


Contact
=======

http://www.gaugusch.at/fou4s
Markus Gaugusch <fou4s@gaugusch.at>