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Am building a script to find out when a list of servers was last fully updated with yum update.

I can find it by a history |grep "yum update"|head -n 1 however, the problem is that a user could have launced it but didn't type "y" in the prompt.

Another way I tried was with yum history

ID | Login user | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 109 | <xyz user> | 2015-08-20 07:18 | Erase | 1 E< 108 | root <root> | 2015-08-18 08:56 | Update | 3 > 107 | root <root> | 2015-08-14 07:39 | Update | 1 106 | root <root> | 2015-08-14 07:38 | Update | 1 105 | root <root> | 2015-08-14 07:38 | Update | 3 104 | root <root> | 2015-08-13 07:31 | Update | 1 103 | root <root> | 2015-08-11 05:46 | Update | 1 102 | root <root> | 2015-08-11 05:46 | Update | 2 101 | root <root> | 2015-08-11 05:45 | Update | 3 100 | root <root> | 2015-08-11 05:45 | Update | 3 99 | root <root> | 2015-08-10 20:41 | Update | 1 98 | root <root> | 2015-08-05 02:35 | Update | 1 97 | root <root> | 2015-05-14 10:52 | Update | 1 96 | root <root> | 2015-05-01 02:59 | Obsoleting | 2 95 | root <root> | 2015-04-09 16:06 | Update | 1 < 94 | <xyz.user> | 2015-03-28 08:49 | Update | 1 >< 93 | <xyz.usert> | 2015-03-28 08:14 | Erase | 3 >< 92 | <xyz.user> | 2015-03-13 07:46 | Install | 6 >< 91 | <xyz.user> | 2015-03-13 05:45 | I, U | 24 > 90 | root <root> | 2015-03-04 01:24 | Update | 3

But I can't find a way of determining the date the yum update was launched and was successful. Since if I check, for example, the transaction ID 108 which is marked as "Update" launched on 18th, I don't find the command yum update for that particular date :

history |grep 2015 |grep "yum update" 5182 20150313-054444 > yum update

Another path I tried was with /var/log/yum.log but yum.log will show installs and updates also. If a package is updated while installing a package e:g: yum install varnish and it requires an update of certain packages eg:(varnish-libs-2.1.5-5.el6.i686, 3.0.7-1.el6.i686 etc) this will be shown as updated in the yum.log

Is there a way to find the date a yum update was launched and it was successful?

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4 Answers 4

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You almost answered your question. Here is a way you can find latest 5 updated packages:

grep Updated: /var/log/yum.log | tail -5

Output example:

Aug 05 13:28:34 Updated: virt-manager-common-1.1.0-9.git310f6527.fc21.noarch Aug 05 13:28:34 Updated: glusterfs-libs-3.5.5-2.fc21.i686 Aug 05 13:28:35 Updated: virt-manager-1.1.0-9.git310f6527.fc21.noarch Aug 05 13:28:36 Updated: virt-install-1.1.0-9.git310f6527.fc21.noarch Aug 05 13:28:38 Updated: glusterfs-3.5.5-2.fc21.i686
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    cat is misused (take a look at The Useless Use of Cat Award ) , and -10 is not needed as tail shows ten lines per default: so it's better: grep Updated: /var/log/yum.log | tail Commented Aug 21, 2015 at 12:23
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    You are absolutely wright! But that's an old habit to cat everything ) 10 (changed to 5) is needed because you can choose any number of records to grep. That's why i leaved number with grep. Commented Aug 21, 2015 at 12:27
  • This shows only last 5 updated packages. Consider Senario below: If a package is updated while installing a package e:g: yum install varnish and it requires an update of certain packages eg:(varnish-libs-2.1.5-5.el6.i686,3.0.7-1.el6.i686 etc) this will be shown as updated in the yum.log. Whereas I want exactly when the yum update was launched and was run succesfully, not the last 5 updated packages. Commented Aug 21, 2015 at 13:21
  • You may want to use auditd and creating rules for yum execution. Commented Aug 22, 2015 at 1:43
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    It's possible that yum.log has been cleared out if yum hasn't been used since logs rotated. If that's the case you can grep through e.g. /var/log/yum.log-20180101 etc Commented Mar 19, 2019 at 16:08
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First you need to define what "upgrade" means. Eg. upgrade with only a newer kernel will be an install (and likely an erase of an older one). If someone does "upgrade foo" does that count? What about "distro-sync" that ends up just doing upgrades (or if it doesn't)? Does it count if the transaction failed?

Then stop greping output, it will only lead to pain and suffering.

Using the API is pretty simple, eg (latest time a transaction was started to upgrade any package):

import yum import time yb = yum.YumBase() for old in yb.history.old(): if "Update" in (hpkg.state for hpkg in old.trans_data): print "Latest Update:", time.ctime(old.beg_timestamp) break
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The following command lists recently installed or updated RPM packages:

rpm -qa --last | head

It may includes packages installed outside YUM too. This command can also run without root privilege.

[EDIT] You can try my script https://github.com/seffparker/nagios-plugins/blob/master/check_pkg

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You can query this info directly from the Yum History SQLite DB with root privileges using this statement:

SELECT datetime( max(dt_end), 'unixepoch', 'localtime') FROM trans WHERE cmdline LIKE '%update%'

The SQLite file to query has 2 likely locations:

  • /var/lib/dnf/history.sqlite
  • /var/lib/yum/history.sqlite

Example: https://bigfix.me/relevance/details/3022966

Related: https://serverfault.com/questions/389650/how-to-check-when-yum-update-was-last-run

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