[Spacewalk-list] Packages associated with wrong channel

[Jason M. Nielsen]

I have 4 base channels, rhel5 has children, basically:
RHEL 4 Base - i386
RHEL 4 Base - x8664
RHEL 5 Base - i386
- RHEL 5 Updates - i386
RHEL 5 Base - x8664
- RHEL 5 Updates - x8664
...

firefox-3.6.13-2.el5.i386 was submitted in December of 2010. This is 
based off the actual dates from the /var/satellite directories and file.

This rpm was only rhnpushed to RHEL 5 Updates - i386.

RHEL 4 Base - i386 channel was created 03-30-2011. Well after the above 
rpm was pushed.

I was checking up2date on a RHEL4 system and noticed there was an update 
for firefox and the associated rpm was you guessed it. The one above 
which is clearly not a RHEL4 rpm. Nor was it ever pushed to that 
channel(I still had my rhnpush command on the screen so I know it wasnt 
that plus if it was Id have all packages showing up not just some.).

So I go browse the packages for RHEL 4 Base - i386 and there is the rpm 
firefox-3.6.13-2.el5.i386 in the list.

After a long time of poking around I noticed a pattern and it appears to 
be related to errata that were submitted into spacewalk. The script I 
use is not capable of supplying a channel name so it is submitted to all 
channels. I presumed that even with the errata in all channels it would 
still only be the errata and only apply if the rpm existed in the 
channel. Actually it would seem by pushing the errata to all channels it 
results in those rpms becoming associated with the channel with one 
exception. Architecture is held correctly. That is, Im not seeing x8664 
rpms associated with i386 channels.

I realize that if this is what caused the problem then its the b0rked 
script but what Im wondering is does Spacewalk automatically associate 
an rpm with a channel just because errata for the rpm has been submitted 
to that channel?

It seems to me that packages should only be associated to a channel by 
an explicit push of some sort (in my case rhnpush) and no other reason. 
It could be the script itself did this as one section looks like it very 
well might be pushing packages and not just errata. Im completely 
unfamiliar with the api though.

I tried disassociating the errata with the channels but the rpm still 
shows up in the package list. Its looking like the only method to 
reliably clean this up will be start from scratch. Maybe I can just wipe 
the rhel4 channels.

If it was not the script and related to the errata then Im baffled as to 
what caused this.

This is the script I used (get_errata.pl):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rhn2spacewalk/files/

Thanks.
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