Up2date is a Red Hat tool to apply patches and maintain packages. It is primarily used with Red Hat Enterprise software, while yum is the main tool in Fedora.

Up2date downloads packages from the Red Hat Network (RHN) and requires a paid subscription. An inventory of installed packages for each managed server is stored on RHN and can be used to determine which patches to apply. One nice feature of RHN is the web interface that allows server management and patching.

To make changes to the system, up2date must be run as root. If up2date is run with no options, it starts a GUI wizard that walks you through the process.

For remote command line administration or scripting, use up2date-nox.

Update or install a package

up2date-nox --install package-name

The version number is not used in the package-name, it is determined automatically.

Show all packages which have updates available

up2date-nox --list

Show all packages that can be installed from all channels

up2date-nox --showall

Update the package list for this server on RHN

up2date-nox --packages

Use --packages after installing an RPM package manually (not through RHN).

Important files

/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date - config settings
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources - external repositories
/etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid - RHN system ID