Automating Yum updates with Yum-cron

In this recipe we will investigate the role of Yum in conjunction with Yum-cron in order to automate the task of updating your system.

For some users the prospect of managing daily or even weekly updates with Yum may prove to be a time-consuming and unwelcome task. It could be that you are managing more than one server, or that your time is taken elsewhere with other types of tasks, but whatever the reason it is the purpose of this recipe to show you how to automate this process in order to alleviate the task of administration and to remove the need for daily attendance.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe you will require a working installation of the CentOS 6 operating system with root privileges, a console-based text editor of your choice, and a connection to the Internet in order to facilitate the download of additional packages.

How to do it...

The purpose of this recipe is to show you how Yum-cron can be used to automate nightly Yum updates. To do...