I need a Patch Management solution for RedHat

kepler · 04-12-2006, 06:48 AM

Hello All,

I've been trying to find something like a howto on the Internet to help me setup a SUS-like patch management solution for RedHat Servers, but to no avail. The only stuff I find are references to books that purport to explain the whys and what-fors. Can anyone direct me to a website that might help me out.

Thanks,
K.

masand · 04-12-2006, 06:56 AM

AFAIK that you need to subcribe from redhat to get regular updates.

are you trying out with yast in Suse??

regards

kepler · 04-12-2006, 08:10 AM

I have a subscription with RedHat on one Enterprise Server. We are looking at using RedHat for a number of other services where I work, but I want to minimise the amount of traffic going out to the Internet. I know there is a method with using a proxy server, but I'd like to know all the options available to me.
K.

masand · 04-12-2006, 08:15 AM

So you want to get the updates on one machine and use the same for other machines??

regards

Capt_Caveman · 04-12-2006, 08:57 AM

I believe you can use YUM. Setup a head node that gets its updates directly from Redhat and acts as a local YUM RPM repository. The client machines on the network then use YUM to grab updates from the local repo. I'm not 100% sure if this will work with Redhats update scheme, but I don't see why it wouldn't. Also note that if the client machines are not licensed with Redhat, then you are likely violating the terms of the license on the headnode.

kepler · 04-12-2006, 08:57 AM

**quote** So you want to get the updates on one machine and use the same for other machines??

Yes, something like that. If I could setup a redhat server to act as a repository for security patches that other redhat servers can connect to, then that would do the job. This repository server would need to have patches for services/applications that it would not be necessarily running itself.

kepler · 04-12-2006, 09:52 AM

Capt_Caveman - I got this link from... aaah elsewhere

describing how to use yum with fedora and rh9. But I don't think it can work eith RH ES, what with licences etc.

http://fedoranews.org/alex/tutorial/yum/
Do you think this can be amended to work with ES patches?

Here is another link for ZENwork, which claims to do the job too.
http://www.novell.com/products/zenwo...nuxmanagement/

If possible I'd like to go with the first option as it costs nothing in the spirit of all things Linux.