[Spacewalk-list] RHN Errata in Spacewalk

[Rodrique Heron]

-----Original Message-----
From: spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Andy Speagle
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 8:07 AM
To: spacewalk-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: [Spacewalk-list] RHN Errata in Spacewalk

On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 03:30 -0500, RLehmann at timocom.com wrote:
> is there a way to push RHN Erratas into Spacewalk 0.6 on an RHEL 5 
> Server?

The best way to do this is to use the API to replicate the errata from RHN into your Spacewalk server.  I've proven the concept on my own Spacewalk 0.6 server with a python script ... and a few caveats.

1) There doesn't seem to be a way to efficiently "merge" errata like you would in a commercial Satellite with access to official RHN errata.  

2) Publishing an entire erratum into all channels on your Spacewalk server for which it is relevant can result in undesired behaviour.  For instance, if you have an erratum that effects both RHEL4 and RHEL5 (assuming you are managing both flavours) the RPMs meant for RHEL5 are pushed into the RHEL4 channel as well, since it's just checking version.

The best way I've found to avoid this is to split each erratum into multiple errata, one for each RHEL version and arch, and append a version-arch code to the end of the advisory name, such as,
RHSA-XXXX:YYYY:R5-64 (RHEL5 - x86_64).

3) Subsequent cloning of these errata for publishing into separate "production" channels doesn't work as one would expect from the WebUI.
Cloning works fantastically, however, the publishing step strips the RPMs from the cloned erratum and does not push the relevant RPMs into the destination "production" channel.  I have filed a bug on this one.

The only way I've found to do this properly is via the API, where "server.errata.clone()" does indeed push the packages to the destination channel and retains them in the cloned errata.

4) There's no way via the v0.6 API to specify the "issue date" for an erratum.  This date is merely the date in which you created the erratum.
This makes cloning errata into "production" a little more tricky, since I can't rely on "issue date" in my Spacewalk server.  I have submitted a bug/feature request for that one too.

----

I hope that helps.
--
Andy Speagle

"THE Student" - UCATS
Wichita State University

Andy-

Is this the API you are referring to?

http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/documentation/api/0.6/handlers/ErrataHandler.html