we have some servers, bound to run under redhat.

we would like to maintain them with software updates, of course... ;-)

instead of having them run up2date individually, we would rather like to keep an up-to-date redhat software repository (a 'mirror', so to say) and schedule updates proper on a per server base, individually.

with what tool(s) are we most likely to succeed?

rtfm pointers appreciated!

thanks,
lobster

ps: with 'normal' distributions i'd doubtless use wget or rsync, but i doubt their applicability in rh's caes... ;-(

the red hat solution to have an up2date red hat repository is to use the red hat satellite server. it's not cheap.

now, if you're talking pre-enterprise versions of red hat (i.e. rh up to 9) it's a silly waste to go that ^^ route, and you could just rsync to maintain a local mirror from http://www.fedoralegacy.org/download...cy-mirrors.php .

if you're talking enterprise versions of red hat (i.e. rhel up to 4) and an automated solution, you have the rhn satellite route and the red hat rhn route since red hat updates are not offered for free. yes, each machine needs to download its own updates in the latter case, but since the updating can happen automatically, at least it's no work.

the other way to go is to manually download from rhn.redhat and maintain your own fileserver and then install updates manually (of course, it is only ethical to use these downloaded files for as many systems have paid for rhn network access), i.e. rpm -uvh http://your-domain.com/rh4/rpm_to_update-4.0.1.rpm if using some apache goodness, or mounting by nfs and then just pointing it at the nfs mounted folder. you might be able to configure all of these rpms as an up2date repository, but i can't say i know how. either way, this manual downloading would be lots of work, but sticking totally with red hat (as in not fedora or centos or scientific or whatever), these are the only methods i can think of.

thank you very much, jillande, for your enlightening explanations. the situation i'm talking about is a site where they decided to go rhel4 for half-a-dozen servers, another three or so to come, eventually.
since we do not want to have them updated automatically, we'd prefer to keep a central software repository and update them from there...
seems we'd have to go for being a satellite, then.

as i haven't found a reference to a 'satellite' offering on rh's website - do they call it by some other name, as well?

thanks again for reading & answering! :-)

oops, i didn't realize you had replied to this.

the product is commonly known as "satellite," but i believe the red hat official name is red hat network satellite server. so if you click on the "red hat network" link on their home page, it is in reference to both satellite and rhn. i believe one has to contact sales/support directly in order to get access to download satellite isos.

a link http://www.redhat.com/rhn/rhndetails/purchase/

thank you very much, indeed, for coming back!
now i know where to continue... ;-)