Redhat Updates: Best Strategy?

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

I have a question about maintaining a Redhat Linux machine.
Downloading and installing security (and bug fix) updates is a pain.
So now I am trying to get clever so I will stay more up to date.

First, to make the downloading easier, I finally decided to use wget
to just collect everything I don't already have:

  wget -N ftp://anonymous:kentborg.borg.org at updates.redhat.com/7.0/en/os/i386/*

[Aside: How can I do a proper anonynous password with the @-sign
without breaking the wget syntax?]

Cool.  It is chugging away in an emacs shell buffer as I type.  Has
been for awhile.

Second, I need to install them.  ...  What will happen if I simply do
the following?

  rpm -Fvh *.rpm

I imagine that dependencies will get upset for things that don't fall
in ASCII order, so I imagine I would need to do that rpm command
several times until I quit getting complaints.  I also know that this
won't compile and install a new kernel or anything like that (however
I think I will try 2.4.10-ac12 on my server, I like it on my
notebook).

Then I reboot and cross my fingers.

Will this work?  


Thanks,

-kb, the Kent who is not yet comfortable with RPM.