On 06/27/2014 06:29 PM, Mark Rousell wrote:
> And yet it most certainly *has* taken on a new form. That changes
> things. The threads about it on this mail list would not exist if
> there had not been such a substantive, real world, change.
On February 29, 2012, CentOS and SL both stopped support for version 4
of their respective distributions. However, Red Hat still has Extended
Lifecycle Support for RHEL4 until February 28, 2015. Where are those
SRPMS? Subscribers to the Extended Support can get them, but they're
not publicly available, and never have been to the best of my
knowledge. RHEL3 was supported by the EUS mechanism until January of
2014, yet CentOS 3 went out of support October 31, 2010 (can't rebuild
if there's no public source from which to rebuild). That's a period of
over three years where subscribers could get packages and SRPMS that
were not available to the public.
Again, this is not a new issue in general; it's just now impacting more
people than before who are surprised by something that's been around for
a long time.
From the CentOS mailing list, back in May of 2012:
On 05/18/2012 04:32 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> Hi,
> I just learned that there exists a "z-stream" channel upstream that
> apparently carries some important bugfixes. Does anyone know what the
> policies are for this channel and how this relates to centos releases?
>
> Regards,
> Dennis
The Z-Stream channels contain nothing important ... in fact they are
not even released publicly.
Z-Stream is security updates that you can apply to that stream and stay
on an older point release. So, they would be the samba updates for the
5.6.z channel and be able to stay on 5.6 instead of moving to 5.7/5.8.
However, like I said before, it is moot point because Red hat does not
release the Z-Stream Source code publicly ... just like they do not
release the EUS code publicly.
If you want those kinds of services, you will need to get them from Red
Hat on as a paid service.
BUT, and I want to make sure everyone understands this, the Z-Stream
items are not things that you do not get in the main (regular) tree ...
they are just some security updates that are already rolled into the
main tree that are also back ported an older, paid for, stabilized tree.
Here is a link to read about the Z-Stream offerings:
https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/#vii
Again, these z-streams are not allowed to be rebuilt and not offered to
the public, but they are also not anything that is required to be up to
date security wise. They are just a "slower moving" subscription
service offered as an add on service with additional cost to RHEL
customers by Red Hat. If you need what this service offers (a slower
update cycle for a specific point release version) that still has
updates backported, then it might be worth the RHEL subscription and the
added zstream subscription ... but since it is not released publicly, it
is not a service CentOS can offer.
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