Maximum RPM Amendum, the real world files; building security updates on EOL Redhat releases

[Paul Howarth]

On Mon, 2005-02-14 at 21:14 -0700, Scott Edwards wrote:
> What considerations should I be making when upgrading packages on an
> older Redhat release? (eg, my collocate RH 7.2 box).  I need the
> critical security updates current, while keeping everything manageable
> and smooth.  I've researched building rpms from spec files (via source
> tarballs, or from src.rpm).  Should I be building from the newest
> src.rpms available?  Should I install from the newest tarballs?  This
> brings up another question,  do I need to upgrade to a newer redhat
> (or to the current fedora) release?  If so, what's the best way to do
> that?
> 
> Even if you can't be exhaustive, please tell me what you know.  I'm
> sure there's plenty that can reconfirm what you have to say, and build
> on it to.

Keeping up to date with security issues for a whole distribution is a
*big* job - just ask the people at fedoralegacy.org that are trying to
do this for old Red Hat/Fedora releases.

If you only have a very limited number of applications running on your
server, you can at least restrict yourself to tracking security updates
for those packages.

However, it would be much easier really to go for a distribution that is
actively maintained by the vendor. Since you're on Red Hat 7.2 it would
seem that going with a Fedora-like distribution that changes very
regularly is not for you, so I'd be inclined to go for one of the Red
Hat Enterprise Linux clones such as centos.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>