Linux system administration methodology or best practice

[mark]

Johan Booysen wrote:
> Yeah but you pay for the privilege to use RHN Satellite.
> 
> I've actually come across Spacewalk, which is apparently a free version
> of RHN Satellite.  I've installed it in a test lab but haven't gotten
> round to decent testing yet.  In the meantime mrepo does the job for us.

Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

I spent a couple of months fighting Spacewalk. Somewhere in April, it just went
from .4 to .5. In spite of what my manager & VP at that job seem to think, you
do NOT use something < v1.0.1 for production.

	mark "if you email me directly, I'll tell you all sorts of
		things about it...."
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Michael Ward
> Sent: 28 August 2009 14:42
> To: 'General Red Hat Linux discussion list'
> Subject: RE: Linux system administration methodology or best practice
> 
> Our satellite server downloads all updates from RHN. We can then
> allocate
> updates to various machines throughout our infrastructure for testing.
> Once
> testing is complete, if there are discrepancies, we remove the offending
> packages from our updates and push the updates to the production
> machines at
> night.
> 
> 
> Michael Ward
> Redhat Linux Administrator
> Metro State College of Denver
> 303-352-4225
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com]
> On Behalf Of Johan Booysen
> Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 4:18 AM
> To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
> Subject: RE: Linux system administration methodology or best practice
> 
> Probably not the cleverest way of doing it, but it works for me:  I've
> implemented mrepo, which synchronises updates with RHN.  Then I
> configure my servers to point at mrepo for updates.  
> 
> You can then make mrepo synch, test the latest updates and update
> production servers after testing.  Then synch mrepo to get the next
> bunch of updates, test, and deploy to production, etc etc.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Shaughnessy, Kevin
> Sent: 27 August 2009 22:06
> To: redhat-list at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: Linux system administration methodology or best practice
> 
> I am also looking for hands-on advice for Red Hat administration,
> specifically regarding updates:
>  -  I'd like a sandbox system to apply them, and test them.  Do I have
> to buy the same level of support for this "trash able" system? (I've
> already ruled out Fedora and CentOS, as I need to maintain compatibility
> with EMC PowerPath and Oracle.)
>  -  By the time I've evaluated a set of updates, there are new ones, and
> yum always pulls the newest.  How do I migrate my 'approved' set from
> sandbox to development to production?
>  -  How often do you apply updates to your production servers?  Security
> updates?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 


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