[Spacewalk-list] spacewalk: package updates and rollbacks

[Kastytis]

Hi Spacewalkers!

I try to find out what programs and services are providing the package 
management functionality on spacewalk. When a package update is 
scheduled on the webgui it gets installed on the client (Wolla!). The 
yum logs on the client are empty and the the rpm -U does not log 
anything by default. Some rhn* logs contain a lot of information but are 
had to interpret.

I tried looking at redhat documentation [1] but but could not find a 
clear answer. Possible answers could be.

up2date ? (even on when the client OS is Centos ???)
rpm ?
yum ?
rhn_register ?

Could anyone please enlighten me how the package gets updated?
- How the update package is pushed from the server to the client?
- what program/package-manager on the client side client installs the 
package?
- Do detailed update logs exist on spacewalk server? I see the client 
history logs, the actions scheduled for that client and the result; 
i.e., was that action was successful or not. But the information is not 
detailed and lacks for example a list of additionally the installed 
dependencies. What I would like to see is the list of all packages and 
their status, like in YUM log (installed packages, installed 
dependencies, deleted packages, failed packages). Do such logs exist 
somewhere on spacewalk server or at least on the client?

spacewalk server: Centos6
spacewalk client: Centos6

This leads to one more question requiring some hands on experience with 
spacewalk: would you consider spacewalk as a reliable system for package 
management (updates) in a Centos5 and Centos6 server environment? I am 
basically concerned about rolling back the updates using so called 
profile snapshots (That's why I need to know how package gets updated on 
the client). Is this feature designed (or safe enough) to be used for 
update rollbacks? Is this functionality normally "enough" in real life 
scenarios to bring the Server back to "before the update" state.

In other words: would it be reasonable to skip the step doing snapshots 
of the virtual-servers before scheduling regular server update with 
spacewalk?

[1] 
https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Network_Satellite/5.5/html-single/Reference_Guide/index.html 


Thank you and best wishes,
Kastytis