Re: automating redhat package updates?

[Philip J. Hollenback]

Thanks for the advice.

My setup is simple enough (all redhat linux machines) that the
previous suggestion of autorpm is sufficient.

Unfortunately autorpm has a major limitation in that it can not deal
with codependent packages, but that is off topic for this list.

P.

On Prickle-Prickle, the 38th of Confusion, John Valdes spake:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 12:33:51PM -0700, Philip J. Hollenback wrote:
> > Here's something I want to solve with cfengine but I haven't figured
> > out the best way to do it: automated package installs.
> [...]
> > Has anyone implemented this?  It seems to be a fairly general issue
> > which would turn up on just about any modern OS.
> 
> We've done this; we've automated software package installation as well
> as OS patch installation for SunOS (solaris) and Linux (RedHat) using
> cfengine.  What we did was create two cfengine modules, one for
> handling software and one for patches.  The modules query an SQL
> database for a list of software and patches which should be installed
> on a given system, compare the lists with what's installed on the
> system, download any necessary files from a private anonymous ftp
> server, and finally install (or remove) the packages or patches.
> 
> Where cfengine comes into play is that the modules will define classes
> for any packages or patches which are installed, which can then be
> used by cfengine's various actions (shellcommands, processes,
> editfiles, etc) to complete the installation of the package or patch.
> For example, if a package installs a new daemon which runs under inetd
> control, a class will be defined which can then be used by editfiles
> to add a line for the daemon in /etc/inetd.conf which in turn will
> define another class to be used by processes to send a SIGHUP to
> inetd.
> 
> We still need to document what we've done more thoroughly, but you can
> find examples of our modules as well as a copy of a paper we've
> written about it (it's a little low on specifics; it discusses more
> the motivation and background of the system we implemented) at
> http://astro.uchicago.edu/~davidr/cfengine-tools/.  The intent of the
> files there are mainly to serve as an example of one way of automating
> software & patch installs; they're not really meant to be downloaded
> as used as it.
> 
> John
> 
> John Valdes                        Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
> valdes@uchicago.edu                                 University of Chicago

-- 
Philip J. Hollenback
philiph@pobox.com
http://www.hollenback.net