RHEL patching questions

Linux and Unix-Like Red Hat
1

Hi,

We have RHEL 4, 5 and 6. What patching plan is supposed to be? How often do we need to patch these systems?

Thank you in advance! I'll give you my Thanks for any helpful info!

2

How long is a piece of string?

This is determined by how easily you can update the machines, what sort of outage windows you can manage, as well as how well your applications can be regression tested.

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3

The answers to these questions are 5 out of 10. Is a 6 month patching plan good enough?

Thank you!

4

It all depends. Some people patch nightly, but that can cause issues when the programs break due to bugs introduced in code. It is going to depend on your ability to regress or fix an issue in case of a failure.

What is your rollback time/procedure? Can you even initiate one? How do you lock which patches you need in case a machine is patched on a different day. If you point them toward the upstream distribution, chances are you will have machines with different code sets within weeks.

This is not a simple forum question like how to make sure you set NFS caching. There are entire groups at companies that handle this.

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5

Thank you much for the discussion. Sorry I can't answer these questions because of lack of info.

Is IBM BigFix Patch Management free of charge??

6

That would be a question for IBM.

You could also look at RHN Satellite (costs money) or Spacewalk, the more "bleeding edge" but free implementation of RHN Satellite. You will still need subscriptions, but you can create channels for administration.

You could also use plain cobbler/chef/puppet to manage patches if you like.

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7

Thanks a lot for the valuable info!!

Spacewalk sounds good but it does not support Red Hat Enterprise server. This could be a problem. See this: Spacewalk: Free & Open Source Linux Systems Management - Introduction

Sorry I don't quite understand this statement ""bleeding edge" but free implementation of RHN Satellite"? RHN Satellite has a free version?

8

It doesn't support it, but it will work. The reason they don't support it outright is because it competes with their RHN satellite server. There are lots of ways to make it work.

Using spacewalk as a redhat satellite replacement | www.codarama.com

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9

Thanks a lot. I am studying it now. All the info you provided is valuable! I do appreciate your help!:slight_smile:

10

Any idea if the latest Spacewalk is compatible with RHEL 4? I don't see it in the download page: Index of /yum

Thanks!