We are pleased to announce the first Alpha release of "Scientific Linux 
updateinfo.xml" .  This provides support for the yum-security plugin. 
This new feature set is now available for the 6rolling security tree.


The following features are in process and not available yet:

- this Alpha does not cover 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3
- non-security packages that were added to the security tree for
   dependency resolution are not currently noted
- the packages we add into the security tree - selinux and tzdata
      are not currently noted
- the packages created by Scientific Linux are not currently noted
- the fastbugs repos do not have this metadata yet


For interested folks, most of the python scripts that create this xml 
file are published in fastbugs.

If you've got your repositories pointed to the correct location you can 
begin testing this right now.  To take advantage of this feature update 
simply ensure that you've got the 'yum-plugin-security' package 
installed.  You should be able to run the following commands:

         yum updateinfo info
         yum updateinfo list
         yum updateinfo summary
         yum updateinfo list all security
         yum --cve CVE-2012-2668 info update
         yum --advisory SLSA-2012:1046-01 info update

Do remember if you change your existing repos to point to 6rolling that
they will not point to $releasever any longer.  This may have unexpected
results if you are not currently on SL6.3


Links:
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/i386/updates/security/repodata/updateinfo.xml
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/x86_64/updates/security/repodata/updateinfo.xml

The updateinfo creation scripts are contained in the following rpms.
These rpms are NOT required for using the updateinfo.xml.  They are
only required if you wish to create your own updateinfo.xml for a
repo you maintain.  Feel free to use them if you wish.

http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/updates/fastbugs/repoview/python-Updateinfo.html
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/updates/fastbugs/repoview/python-Updateinfo.html

SL6:
   i386
      python-Updateinfo-0.1.4-1.sl6.noarch.rpm
   x86_64
      python-Updateinfo-0.1.4-1.sl6.noarch.rpm
   srpm
      python-Updateinfo-0.1.4-1.sl6.src.rpm

-- 
Pat Riehecky
Scientific Linux Developer