As a worst-case scenario, you could always just compile your own version of openssl as an RPM for your system, and then rpm -ihv.
EDIT: Starting with the source file (.tar.gz), here's what you want to do:
1) Create a new directory to house the RPM hierarchy.
# mkdir -p myopenssl/BUILD myopenssl/RPMS myopenssl/SOURCES myopenssl/SPECS myopenssl/SRPMS
2) Go into the SOURCES directory, and download your source openssl.tar.gz
# cd myopenssl/SOURCES
# mv openssl.tar.gz myopenssl/SOURCES/
3) Create a spec file that provides the necessary metadata (you will need to verify all the values are correct)
--- spec ----
%define _topdir /home/user/myopenssl
%define name openssl
%define release 0
%define version x.x
%define buildroot %{_topdir}/%{name}-%{version}-root
BuildRoot: %{buildroot}
Summary: openssl
License: GPL
Name: %{name}
Version: %{version}
Release: %{release}
Source: %{name}-%{version}.tar.gz
Prefix: /usr
Group: Development/Tools
%description
Special build of openssl for centos.
%prep
%setup -q
%build
./configure
make
%install
make install prefix=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr
%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
/usr/local/bin/openssl
%doc %attr(0444,root,root) /usr/local/share/man/man1/openssl.1
4) After you have a spec file, use the rpmbuild command to build your RPM
# rpmbuild -v -bb --clean myopenssl/SPECS/openssl.spec
5) Your RPM is built at this point... use the following command to look at the contents:
# rpm -Vp RPMS/i386/myopenssl.i386.rpm
6) To install it, run the following as root:
# rpm -ihv myopenssl.i386.rpm
Hope this helps!
The yum history option allows the user to view what has happened in past transactions. To make it more simple you can grep Update from yum history
# yum history
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit
ID | Login user | Date and time | Action(s) | Altered
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
41 | root <root> | 2012-04-27 20:17 | Install | 19
40 | root <root> | 2011-11-20 10:09 | Install | 10
39 | root <root> | 2011-11-20 08:14 | Install | 1 E<
38 | root <root> | 2011-11-19 15:46 | Update | 1
Best Answer
Hmm. I don't have anything handy that will tell you at logon, but...
You can install
yum-updatesd
and configure it to email you whenever updates are available for the system it's running on. (You could also configure it to download, or download and install, automatically.) You can also have it write to syslog, if you have something monitoring syslog that can pick it up.It can also notify by DBus, so theoretically you could hack together a program to listen for the notification and then change
/etc/motd
appropriately.