rug provides a wide range of useful information. It allows you to check the status of zmd, view registered services and catalogs, or see information about available patches.

If the zmd is not used for a certain period of time, it can be switched to sleep mode. To check the zmd status and reactivate the daemon, use rug ping. This command wakes zmd up and logs its status information.

To see your registered services, use rug sl, and to see which services are supported on your system, use rug st.

To check for new patches, use rug pch. To get information about a patch, enter rug patch-info patch.

By default, a newly installed system is subscribed to several services. To add a new service, use rug sa URI service_name. Replace service_name with a meaningful and unique string that identifies the new service.

Error on Accessing the Update Catalog

If you are not able to access the update catalog, this might be due to an expired subscription. Normally, SUSE Linux Enterprise comes with a one or three years subscription, during which you have access to the update catalog. This access will be denied once the subscription ends. In case of an access denial to the update catalog you will see a warning message with a recommendation to visit the Novell Customer Center and check your subscription. The Novell Customer Center is available at http://www.novell.com/center/.

To install a package from any subscribed catalogs, use rug in package_name. To install from a selected catalog only, use -c catalog name. Get more information about a package with rug if package_name.

To remove a package, use rug rm package_name. If other packages depend on this package, rug displays their names, versions, and types. Confirm if you want to remove the package anyway.

One the main advantages of rug is its user management. Normally, only root can update or install new packages. With rug, you can assign the right to update the system to other users and restrict them, for example, to only updating without the possibility to remove software. Privileges you can grant are:

To give a user permission to update the system, use the rug ua  username upgrade command. Replace username by the name of the user. To revoke the privileges of a user, use command rug ud username. To list users with their rights, use rug ul.

To change the current privileges of a user, use rug ue username and replace the username by the name of the desired user. You get a list with the rights of the selected user. The edit command is interactive. Use plus (+) or minus (-) to add or remove the user's privileges and press Enter. For example, to permit the user to delete software, enter +remove. To save and quit, press Enter at a blank prompt.

Using rug, the system can be updated automatically (for example, by scripts). The simplest example is a fully automatic update. To do this, configure a cron job as root that executes rug up -y. The up -y option downloads and installs the patches from your catalogs without confirmation.

However, you may not want the patches to be installed automatically, but may want to retrieve them and select the patches for installation at a later time. To download patches only, use the rug up -dy command. The up -dy option downloads the patches from your catalogs without confirmation and saves them to the rug cache. The default location of the rug cache is /var/cache/zmd.

rug allows you to customize its setup via a set of preferences. Some of them are preconfigured during installation. Use rug get command to get a list of the preferences available. To edit a preference, enter rug set preference. For example, adjust settings if you need to update your system through a proxy. Before downloading the updates, send your username and password to the proxy server. To do so, use the following commands:

rug set proxy-url url_path
rug set proxy-username name
rug set proxy-password password

Replace url_path by the name of your proxy server. Replace name by your username. Replace password by your password.

For more information about updating from the command line, enter rug --help or see the rug(1) man page. The --help option is also available for all rug commands. If, for example, you need help for rug update, enter rug update --help.

Managing packages on a Linux system requires root privileges. The ZEN tools and rug have their own user management system that allows users to install software updates. When a user first invokes an action that requires special privileges in the ZEN tools, a prompt for the root password appears. When the password has been verified, The ZEN tools automatically add the user's account to the user management system with update permissions. To review or change these settings, use the rug user management commands (see Section 9.1.4, “rug User Management” for information).

Software Updater resides in the notification area (GNOME) or the system tray (KDE) of your panel as an icon depicting a globe. It changes color and appearance depending on the availability of a network link and new updates. Once a day, Software Updater automatically checks whether updates for your system are available (right-click the application icon and choose Refresh to force an immediate check). The Software Updater applet in the panel changes from a globe to an exclamation mark on an orange background when new updates are available.

Error on Accessing the Update Catalog

If you are not able to access the update catalog, this might be due to an expired subscription. Normally, SUSE Linux Enterprise comes with a one or three years subscription, during which you have access to the update catalog. This access will be denied once the subscription ends. In case of an access denial to the update catalog you will see a warning message with a recommendation to visit the Novell Customer Center and check your subscription. The Novell Customer Center is available at http://www.novell.com/center/.

Left-click the panel icon to open the updater window. It displays a list of patches and new package versions available. Each entry has a short description and, if applicable, a category icon: Security patches are marked with a yellow shield. Optional patches are marked with a light blue circle. Recommended patches are not marked with an icon. Security patches are listed first, then recommended patches, optional patches, and finally new package versions. Use the links All, Packages, and Patches to filter the list of packages displayed.

	Packages versus Patches
Officially released updates from Novell show up as Patches. New package versions from other sources show up as Packages.

To get details about a certain entry, mark it with the mouse and click the Details link under the list window. To select an entry for installation, mark the entry's check box. Use the links All and None to select or deselect all patches. Clicking Update installs the selected programs.

Figure 9.1. Selecting the Software Updates

To install software packages, start Install Software from the menu or run zen-installer. The interface is almost identical to Software Updater (see Section 9.2.2, “Obtaining and Installing Software Updates”). The only difference is a search panel you can use to search for packages or to filter the list. Mark the check box of packages that should be installed then press Install to start the package installation. Possible dependencies on other packages are automatically resolved by the installer.

Start Remove Software from the menu or run zen-remover to uninstall software packages. The list of packages can be narrowed with the links Products (uninstalls the complete products), Patterns (see Section 8.3.1.2, “Installing and Removing Patterns” for details on patterns), Packages, and Patches. Mark the check box of a list entry that should be removed then press Remove to start the package uninstallation. If other packages depend on the ones marked by you, these are also removed. You must confirm the removal of additional packages. If you click Cancel in the confirmation dialog, no packages are uninstalled.

To configure the ZEN tools, click Configure in the application window. A window with three tabs opens: Services, Catalogs, and Preferences.