Keeping a Slackware Linux Server up-to-date with Swaret

Upgrading Slackware

swaret is one of the tools that is good for upgrading packages and installing new ones on Slackware.

Here is a guide on installing and using swaret.

To get swaret, download it from here, then install it (as root):

installpkg swaret-VERSIONNUMBER-noarch-1.tgz
swaret --set VERSION=10.1
swaret --update
    

Then type swaret --help or swaret --morehelp to see how to use it, you can configure swaret using the /etc/swaret.conf file.

Care sould be taken when using swaret or any other update/upgrade tool, I suggest using it to just upgrade the packages you are most interested in or that pose a security risk to your system.

An Example

A typical upgrade would go as follows (I'm upgrading gaim in this example):

swaret --update
swaret --upgrade gaim