RHEL 5.2 Upgraded instead of Updating
 

Hi,

I must have a misunderstanding about updating:

I installed RHEL 5.2 x86 64-bit Advanced Platform.

I registered with the RH network, then I get a message that Security Updates are available (there are 197 package updates avalable) I ran the software updater.

Then I get:

cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.3 (Tikanga)

I have software that requires 5.2. How would I update 5.2 without turning it into 5.3?

thanks for any ideas,
tongar

You can just apply the security updates etc so it still stays on 5.2. I think you need to install yum-security something or other, there is a redhat KB item on it some where as I remember reading about it very recently. Sorry I know this is not much help, but hopefully might point u in the right direction.

Thanks FragInHell,

I see that yum-security is installed, but did not remember it giving me any choices.

Anyway, that is just security fixes, isn't there a way to get security and non-security 5.2 improvements without going to 5.3? Everybody here knows what the quality of any software initial version release is that has to make a deadline. I want RHEL 5.2 with all the 5.2 fixes of any sort. The primary software for this server will not accept 5.3.

I see yum may have a different interpretation of the words upgrade/update than apt-get which I think does what I want on Ubuntu.

thanks for any ideas,
tongar

What is the primary software that will not accept 5.3? 5.3 is really just 5.2 (or 5.0 for that matter) with the current updates. As RH builds it's OSs specifically for maintaining compatibility/stability(within any major release, 4.X, 5.X, etc) it is very unusual for an update to cause this kind of issue. An easy example of this it the kernel. RHEL5.0 came out with a 2.6.18 based kernel and RHEL5.7(or however high they go) will have a 2.6.18 based kernel. While back patches for security and hardware support are added, they stick with the base kernel to minimize the type of issues you are referring to.

This would also be a discussion I would be having with RH. That is what your subscription is for.

Thanks lazlow,

I just want to know the rules and I will comply with them.

So far I have this, please correct if necessary:

1. RHEL 5.x (for example, 5.2) is really not in the business of having a .x product boundary that is updateable. If a user of 5.x wants any fixes other than security fixes, they must be prepared to move to 5.x+1 or higher.

2. There is a mechanism provided by yum-security to allow a 5.x user to get only the security updates and nothing else and remaining at the same .x level. How this works is unclear.

thanks,
tongar

Again:

As for the rest of your last post; basically you got it. The way it handles it (I THINK) is that when you update to 5.x+1 it changes the directory that it looks at in the repo. After 5.X+1 comes out they only put security updates in the old directory.