On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 05:16:02PM -0800, Sherrett O. Walker wrote: > I have inherited a pack of RHEL3.0ES servers. 2 Dell 2850s, a pack of > 1850s, an 850, and 6 1420s. They come to me with a load of software > installed via different methods (rpm, tar.gz, tar.bz). > > Forgive me, as I'm new to this. My understanding is that I can get > redhat to upgrade software with problems (sounds like a rap group- SWP?) > on these machines for me for $300 per year per machine or so via the red > hat network. Yup - the price list is only at redhat.com. You need a subscription for every system. You can't subscribe one and not the rest. Once you have everything properly configured (and it's quick and easy to do), a simple # up2date -u will upgrade all the software to the current patch levels. The subscription also includes free upgrades to RHEL 4. Red Hat offers discounts starting at 10 systems and you're well above that. Contact sales@xxxxxxxxxx for a quote for your environment. > However, is the software that's installed via non-RPM hard > to keep in the proper update queue? Nope - it's just the packages that came from Red Hat. RHN doesn't know about about any other installed software. > Is there a better way to do this? I've read a little about yum- is > that an option for me? What I do is a combination of RHN and yum. I use yum for packages are not in RHN and point it to Dag's archive that includes RHEL-package software (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/). I typically do not install software from tarballs if I can avoid it. For example, bash-completion comes from Dag's archive. You can also build your own yum repository for home-created software and update your systems from it. The updates that Red Hat provides are not available anywhere else. (there are forks/rebuilds of the source rpms, but that's a totally different topic). > And, is it important for me to keep an eye on this? Should I be > looking out for software like ssh or https only, or do I need to watch > kernel information especially? Am I missing something else? Most of the packages that have received updates via RHN are due to security vulnerabilities. The kernel updates include new features like updated drivers and some packages include bug fixes, but there are a *lot* of security fixes in there. If your systems are totally in a trusted environment, you will safer than if they're internet-facing, but you still upgrade nonetheless. .../Ed -- Ed Wilts, RHCE Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:ewilts@xxxxxxxxxx Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
