[Spacewalk-list] spacewalk: package updates and rollbacks

[Paul Robert Marino]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Kastytis <kbsecos at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

The spacewalk server logs the action in its database and has the roll
back information there
however the safest bet is to take a package snapshots after the host
has been built and after each update.

>
> 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 ?

yum and rhn_register do work on CentOS with spacewalk but updates
through yum do not get logged in spacewalk. spacewalk will become
aware of them when it does its nightly checks but it will not store
rollback information.
its also important to remember not to include the default CentOS yum
repos in your install or disable them.

I always include a post snippet to ensure all non spacewalk repos are disables

"
 perl -npe 's/enabled=1/enabled=0/g' -i /etc/yum.repos.d/*
"

>
> 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.

Spacewalk is fine for managing CentOS, Scientific Linux, SuSE, etc..
The snapshots work very well.
By the way for support reasons Redhat Network Satellite explicitly
Does not support any thing other than RHEL and the SuSE incarnation
SuSE Manager only Supports SuSE and RHEL.

That said I use spacewalk with CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora
workstations, and even RHEL in production and its done a very good
Job.


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

That's up to you but its always safest to have rollback capability is
to use snapshots.
I always do my update, take a snapshot, then lock the host so people
cant use yum to circumvent change control.

>
> [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
>
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