Official way to patch Redhat box's?

[soleblazer]

Greetings,

I used to be 100% sun admin ,but now work in a spot where Linux is 95% of the 400 servers.

With sun I had a script that would fetch the sun jumbopatch twice a year and apply to all box;s.

Redhat is much different I am finding. I recently tested out the newest kernel update they had, I ran rpm -Uvh and got it up the arse bc it didnt go well.

Does anyone have a link or something to doc that details how to properly upgrade production servers on RH?

Do most admins use the rpm's? At home I have always just rebuilt my kernel but thats not feasable on a production server.

Any pointers appreciated.

[JavaPunk]

up2date ?

[Radar]

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...ysadmin-guide/

I would use ivh with a kernel so you can fall back to the old one if it pukes.

[soleblazer]

Yes, i realized that after i used uvh..

But does anyone know the correct procedure to patch kernels, are they always via rpms? Is there a way to use an update server or something like that?

[Icarus]

With that many machines it might be easier to use up2date in a cron job. Have it run nightly or so and check, fetch and install updates. Of course Kernel updates will not take affect until you reboot, but that might be a good thing if you have any custom kernel modules that need to be recompiled for the new kernel

The man page on up2date details on how to use it in cron, sort of...it's "up2date -u" for non-interactive batch mode

[Radar]

Originally posted by soleblazer
Yes, i realized that after i used uvh..

But does anyone know the correct procedure to patch kernels, are they always via rpms? Is there a way to use an update server or something like that?

Yes they are Redhat provided backported patches in RPM format. For instance in 2.1AS, its kernel 2.4.9 erratas all the way up to 35 as of this week.

Redhat Network allows you to manage all the updates including kernels over the web. You need up2date and you need to register using rhnregister. Then, you can schedule and manage all that remotely through the RHN website, without cron'ing up2date.

[soleblazer]

Originally posted by Radar
Yes they are Redhat provided backported patches in RPM format. For instance in 2.1AS, its kernel 2.4.9 erratas all the way up to 35 as of this week.

Redhat Network allows you to manage all the updates including kernels over the web. You need up2date and you need to register using rhnregister. Then, you can schedule and manage all that remotely through the RHN website, without cron'ing up2date.

And people use this in production environments? Someone at work mentioned red carpet, seems to be similiar to up2date...any thoughts on that solution?