I read your post and did it manually--I wouldn't trust automatic updating either. Of course, when you think about it, you can't know in advance whether a patch will screw things up, you just have to cross your fingers and try it. Doing updates manually is more a psychological reassurance than a real technical assurance of success. That's why it's important to do as you advised and let it make backups...and hope things don't get so screwed up you can't boot the computer and get in to reverse the changes. The server took longer than usual to reboot after the update and I sweated the whole time. The server's never more vulnerable to catastrophe than during a reboot.