[rhn-users] Patching Red Hat servers

[Mitch Anderson]

West, Brian wrote:
> We have recently introduced Linux into our environment and so I'm 
> wondering how others are handling the process of patching systems ?
>  
> It seems that RedHat Satellite Server would do it but for less than 10 
> servers it's a very expensive solution and one that our company won't 
> buy. If I understand Proxy Server correctly that only avoids a server 
> making a direct connection to RHN but rather to some other system.
for such few servers why avoid making a direct connection to RHN?  
Bandwidth requirements are minimal, excecpt for the updates of coarse... 
but those can be scheduled for off hours and you wouldn't even need to 
be in the office(having them just download the updates and wait untill 
your int the office to actually install them is an option).  Also I 
haven't fully read the service agreement for RHEL, but it may be against 
the policy for servers to be updated through other methods other than 
the redhat provided ones... However, I do know a few places that use the 
same methods as fedora, via YUM...
>  
> Isn't there a method to simply download all patches for a 
> given distribution like RHEL 4 for AMD64 on a quarterly basis and use 
> that as a standard patch set ?
the Basic RHN service which has each server registered and downloading 
updates directly from RedHat is simple enough...  and very convenient 
when done through the RHN website too..
>  
> We basically want to use a standard patch set in a test, User 
> Acceptance and finally Production environment.
from the RHN website you can group your systems into a test and 
production group, and apply updates based on group membership.