MintUpdate behavior (security updates)

[mark1mint]

I'd like to understand something more about the inner logic of mintUpdate:how does it mark the available updates as safe/unsafe/dangerous?

In other words,which are the criteria according to which a package is believed to be safe,or unsafe,or downright dangerous for system stability?

Assuming I'd like to install just security updates and nothing else,how should I proceed?

In Ubuntu you can check/uncheck boxes in software sources to apply only security updates,can I do this in Mint too?

If I manually edit sources.list and temporarily comment out all lines except

Code: Select all

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

then run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade,will this do the trick?

[Kalyk]

In the documentation on the site Clem says something about why a patch is ranks as safe or unsafe, so you might want to read that part.
And the change you suggest will probably work, although you might miss important stability patches.
And I suppose a new firefox-version, which usually has a security component in it, might not be in the security channel.

[mark1mint]

Can you post a link to the documentation you are talking about?
Good point about Firefox updates and stability patches-although in the latter case,I've found that if you have an ATI video card and proprietary driver already installed,some of them may break things rather than improve.

[Kalyk]

http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php

[mark1mint]

I've had a look at the pdf manual,it explains how the update manager works from a user's point of view,but obviously doesn't say anything about what's "under the hood",so to speak:I was trying to understand what is the logic according to which packages are tagged and where are the configuration files for this.
Frankly,the concept is interesting but I still think that the Ubuntu update manager,which lets you choose only security updates if you wish so,is better:I've observed that mintupdate tags as safe also some packages with priority "optional" ,which in other words are not essential security updates.
BTW,I've tried to comment out all lines in sources.list except deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse and Firefox gets updated as well.