Hi, I'm pretty new to Linux and I want to download security patches and install them on RHEL 5.4.
I've searched the red hat web site but cant seem to find where the download link is.
You can download packages from centos repository and install on red hat system
example:
http://centos.alt.ru/pub/repository/centos/5/i386/
If you have a valid RHN contract, you can download any package you want from Red Hat site using any standard web browser and then copy them to your server.
If not, then it's possible to get the packages from an open repository such as CentOS' and manually transfer them to your server (FTP, USB stick, local network, SneakerNet, etc).
Thanks for the responses.
I just have one other question. If I run these updates will it alter the Kernel?
Will the version change from 5.4 to 5.5 or even version 6?
"Versions 5.4 or 5.6" - Those represent the version of the distribution release, not the kernel.
E.g.: You can have 3 different machines running RHEL 4, 5, 6 respectively, and use the same kernel in all of them.
If you install the package named "kernel-..." it will indeed install a newer kernel but the previous one will not be removed or overwritten. You can have as many kernels as you want but only one will be in use at any given time.
To disable updating the kernel when you do update of entire system using yum update, you can add exclude=kernel* in /etc/yum.conf