Stephan Wiesand wrote:
> On Mar 20, 2012, at 21:07 , Mark Stodola wrote:
>
>   
>> What is the policy/procedure for minor releases getting security and other updates?  I'm holding at SL 5.2 for various reasons and am unable to upgrade to any later releases at this time.  I've noticed that the SRPMS directory under the 5.2 tree contains newer releases of some packages (for example, virt-manager).  Is this an artifact of some hard linking?  The copy of virt-manager in the main 5.2 repo is broken (python error in libvirt recognized by TUV).  I see a newer srpm, but no corresponding binary package.
>>
>> I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that TUV was to support all releases for 10 years and that a viable option was to remain on a minor release and still receive reasonable bugfixes/security errata.  Does SL vary from this?  Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>>     
>
> At your service :-)
>
> TUV support all current major releases (5, 6) for 10 years. With "standard" level support or below, this means you have to apply all updates, including those bringing you to the next minor release. They support staying with selected minor releases (5.x, 6.x) for a much shorter time, and for a premium charge on top of "standard level" support. The SRPMs for this "extended update support" are not made available in a public place, and thus cannot be used by SL and other clones.
>
> SL has been making a valiant attempt to make it possible to stay with any minor release, by separating the security updates from the others, and adding the dependencies (which are not always obvious). They actually did it before TUV invented EUS. And it has been working as well as it possibly could. But it's bound to be less than perfect.
>
> If that's not good enough for your needs, why not purchase subscriptions from TUV?
>
> Regards,
> 	Stephan
>
>   

That clears it up a bit.  I've been using SL since 4 and have been able 
to remain on a minor release with little issue.  I guess it wasn't clear 
to me how TUV was actually supporting and releasing updates with this 
regard.  I've had pretty good luck plucking packages from later updates 
w/ dependencies and getting them to behave.  So it sounds like the 
answer is, TUV has an extra tier of support for those that wish to 
remain at a minor release like I have been doing and that SL is on a 
best-effort basis with no guarantees.  I'll happily  continue to pluck 
and patch as I've been doing.

Thanks,
Mark

-- 
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Digital Systems Engineer

National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591