Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite
2

For compatibility with a program :

  • I need to keep one of our servers in a specific version, for example rhel 5.1
  • I would like to keep it as updated as possible, but not to change versions.

What should I do:

Configure yum?
Configure satellite repository?

share|improve this question
2  
What specifically do you need to stay static for your application to work correctly? – MDMarra Sep 30 '09 at 15:34

4 Answers

up vote 9 down vote

Do not update the package called redhat-release-5Server-

$ rpm -qf /etc/redhat-release
redhat-release-5Server-5.3.0.3

Make sure to pin that package. If you do edit /etc/yum.conf and put this in it

[main]
exclude=redhat-release-5Server-*

yum would refrain from updating that package and that would keep /etc/redhat-release at its current version.

Not sure why you would want this though...

share|improve this answer
Sheesh, Dennis, you are a spelling fanatic :-) And you already have the 'Strunk & White' badge :-D (joke, joke) Thanks for fixing the typo though... – wzzrd Sep 30 '09 at 19:55
1  
Is this preventing updates coming after the pinned release? If not, I don't see the point. – Christophe Drevet Jan 10 at 9:12
up vote 0 down vote

You could exclude either. You will get updates all updates within the minor version. The exclude directive excludes the specified packages from update. In this case the version of the OS will not be upgraded but it would still upgrade all packages within that release.

i.e. In your case after putting in the exclude line (You can put either version of exclude), the version of RHEL would stay at 5.6 but any upgrades within RHEL5.6 will be applied.

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO.txt

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Gunnar - those requirements for Auth Manager and OV NNM are probably tied to the kernel package, rather than the Red Hat release number, so pinning the redhat-release package won't address the fundamental problem.

If you use the yum-versionlock RPM you can lock the kernel package at a specific version to support the vermagic in the drivers from HP or RSA, or modify the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file to set "UPDATEDEFAULT=no" to prevent new kernel package installations from changing your default boot kernel.

This way you'll get all the necessary security and stability patches, but without breaking poorly-designed apps that can't cope with kernel changes properly.

share|improve this answer
up vote -1 down vote

There are several reasons to keep a specific version. I have 2 examples. HP OV NNM requires you to NOT update from RHEL 6.2, and RSA Authentication Manager runs on RHEL 5.5! No version updates allowed.

/Gunnar

share|improve this answer
1  
That's not an answer to the actual question. Comments or replies to comments should be made as comments, not as separate answers. – Jenny D Mar 8 at 9:25
That's what I thought, too, but I flagged it as such, and my flag was declined. So I guess this is a legitimate answer, even though all it does is clarify why the question itself is legitimate. – MadHatter Mar 8 at 10:51

protected by MadHatter Mar 8 at 9:26

This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.