Orlando Richards wrote:
> On 02/07/09 16:16, Troy Dawson wrote:
>> Well ... this is a good place for the discussion.
>>
>> What *should* we do with those packages that redhat releases for the
>>  extended support series.
> 
> Do you have access to them okay? I couldn't get to the rpms (or the src
> rpms) using my RHN account, but we have a fairly basic level of
> entitlements.
> 

We only get our src rpm's (that we release) from their public ftp site
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/
or one of it's mirrors.

>> I'll say this upfront that it's a bit of a pain. It's a piece of cake
>> to look, download and build any src.rpm's that RedHat releases for
>> them. But the hard part is that you then have to figure out which
>> release those packages are for. That is the harder part. It is made
>> even harder by the fact that these packages usually come out a day to
>> a week after RedHat releases their usual security updates for the
>> same package. So I have no idea that there is a extra backpatched
>> security update for whatever it is until after I've already pushed
>> out the normal security update.
>>
> 
> Hmm, I see the problem. Unless redhat have a specific announcement 
> mechanism for the extended support chain, I can't see how to pick up on 
> them easily. I imagine that there's quite an overhead in continuing to 
> support N versions of SL4/5 - presumably Redhat also realise this (hence 
> the large scale of deployment and subscription fees required to become a 
> subscriber to the extended support service).
> 
> 
>> That being said, lets say we do figure out a way for this. How would
>> we get these packages out to you in a way that you could get them?
> 
> How about dropping them into the SL4.7 update repository? That way, 
> those who use 4x will skip past them (right?), but those sticking with 
> 4.7 explicitly will still pick them up through yum.

No, that's the problem.  They will *not* get those updates even if they 
are in the yum repository.  If we take the recent kernel for example, 
yum will see the kernel 2.6.9-89.0.3.EL and then the z kernel 
2.6.9-78.0.24.EL and it will think that the 89.0.3 kernel is newer, and 
won't even show the users the z kernel.
Although ... now that I think of it, if you explicitly say a version, 
yum will install it as long as it is newer than your kernel now ... but 
I'm not sure about that.  We'll have to test that.
If that is the case, and as long as people know that they want the 
package, and what it's version is, they can install it.
That would make things very easy for my end.
Troy
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/LCSI/CSI LMSS Group
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