I'm a newbee & need updates for Red Hat 9, for Security.

eagledt63 · 02-04-2006, 03:32 PM

I'm new to Linux and just installed Red Hat 9. I need to know how I go about finding & installing Updates w/o paying for the automated updates from RHN. My system must be vulnerable w/o updated packages. Any help will be much appreciated, Thanks!

amosf · 02-04-2006, 03:41 PM

I would look into updating to fedora core 4 if I were you... It's free.

Why did you just install such an old version of linux?

rolsch · 02-05-2006, 06:13 AM

Until recently I also used RH9. I upgraded to Debian Sarge mainly because of the same problem

If you are determined to stick with RH9, there are several sources to update your system:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/rh9-errata.html
Red Hat still maintains a list of security advisories for end-of-life products.

ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/redhat/9/...86/RedHat/RPMS
At rpmfind, there is quite a bunch of updated RPMs for RH9.

To automate the update process, you might want to use a tool like apt. It looks for updated packages, downloads and installs them while trying to resolve all dependencies correctly. It is available for RedHat and also works for the RPM package format (originally it was developed for Debian and dpkg). Here is the contents of my old "sources.list" file, which points apt to the locations where it should look for updates:

Code:

# k3b
rpm http://rpms.xcyb.org/redhat/9 i686 stable bleeding
rpm-src http://rpms.xcyb.org/redhat/9 i686 stable bleeding

# Red Hat Linux 9
rpm http://ayo.freshrpms.net redhat/9/i386 os updates freshrpms
#rpm-src http://ayo.freshrpms.net redhat/9/i386 os updates freshrpms

Paste those lines into /etc/apt/sources.list and issue the following commands:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

You should get quite a large list of packages that are marked for upgrade. Take care not to upgrade all packages at first, because your RPM database might get inconsistent. In my experience apt is not able to resolve all dependencies correctly, and you might end up with an inconsistent system. Especially large packages like kde are a problem. Try to update smaller packages first that are important for security, like samba or httpd.

unSpawn · 02-05-2006, 09:03 AM

Until you have decided what to do (install more current release, try updating) I strongly suggest first stopping and disabling any running network-facing daemons and firewalling the box and only allow access from your LAN/localhost. If you are going to upgrade, only add allow rules for the update hosts until you have properly hardened the box.

- If you need to stay with RHL 9, also search for "Fedora Legacy" as they try to provide RPM's for EOL'ed releases. Instructions on how to use Yum, Apt-get, Synaptic or whatever are provided there. Please notice that for keeping an EOL'ed release running safely you will need the knowledge and it definately *will* cost you much more time compared to running a current release.
- If you need to install an RHL-alike search for differences between CentOS, Fedora Core and CaOS. Remember though that where it reads "bleeding edge" assert the bleeding will be done solely by *you* :-]
- If you need to install a distro that uses RPM's you could go for SuSE, Mandrake, whatever.