How to patch a HP Proliant DL380 system

[Danesh Qureshi]

I have a HP Proliant DL380 system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 3)

The kernel the HP DL380 is running on is
Linux 2.6.9-34.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Feb 24 16:54:53 EST 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

How do apply the latest patches on the DL380 and do I need to reboot the system for the patches to take effect?

[Stuart Browne · Accepted solution]

'up2date -u' is your friend.

And yes, after you've done them all, you'll need to do a reboot to get onto the latest kernel. Other than that, nothing else (really) requires a reboot.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

up2date will work fine.

Make sure any third party applications you have installed will work with the latest RH update.

An upd2date run will take you to RH 4 update 5, which some ISV's have yet to certify.

SEP

[skt_skt]

Also u may try "up2date --dry-run" to do preview install. Also check the up2date configuration file to make sure that it skips the all packages related to kernel/kernel-source. I hope you just wanted to update the patches for the existing kernel

We update/patch our linux servers using a master satellite server. So at the client side ;
The file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date should have the below listed entries valued as shown, this will prevent the â Kernel Packagesâ from getting upgraded automatically.



# grep kernel /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date

removeSkipList=kernel*;

pkgSkipList=kernel*;

[Danesh Qureshi]

I have read through the up2date man pages and read the RedHat documentation on updating patches, packages, kernel updates, critical updates and erratas.

My question is what is the distinction between the above terms?

When I ran "up2date -u" will it only up2date patches and will it also install critical updates?

Will "up2date -u" update the kernel too or is there a separate command to update the kernel?

How would I know when kernel updates are required and how do I perform ernel updates?

[skt_skt]

When I ran "up2date -u" will it only up2date patches and will it also install critical updates?

Does both

Will "up2date -u" update the kernel too or is there a separate command to update the kernel?

Kernel also get updated unless we SKIP using some config files.

How would I know when kernel updates are required and how do I perform kernel updates?

IN our case we have a satellite server which communicae to the node and from there i can see what is due to upgrade.

You may check with Redhat(through web too).Or we can help you out throug forum if you provide enough details.

Determine which kernel packages are installed.
#rpm â qa|grep â i kernel

kernel-hugemem-2.4.21-27.EL

kernel-smp-2.4.21-27.EL

kernel-2.4.21-27.EL

kernel-utils-2.4-8.37.12



Download the required RPMs,
Install the new Kernel (use â i instead of â U, as we want to keep the copy of OLD Kernel rather than upgrading it).


If the system is multiprocessor, then install the kernel-smp packages, and upgrade the kernel-utils packages.
Install the used kernel newer package by rpm -ivh & rpm -Uvh kernel-utils*



Verify the Boot Loader, and update it accordingly to point to the new kernel.
/etc/grub.conf



Reboot the server.

[Stuart Browne]

up2date can do it all.

Yes, 'kernel*' is usually in the 'Skip' list, but using 'up2date -u kernel kernel-smp' will do the required work for you without any extra steps.

'kernel*' is also in the 'Install only' list of up2date (so it will Install kernel packages, not just freshen them).

Using 'rpm -qa "kernel*"' will show you which kernel packages you have installed.

[Danesh Qureshi]

I have successfully run up2date -u on my HP DL380 system and its now running RHEL AS 3 taroon update 8.

I rebooted my system so that the new updates would take effect.

I noticed messages at the completion of up2date. Please see attached file about these messages.

Please note we do not have satellite server.

I checked to determine which kernel packages are installed on the system:-

# rpm -qa | grep -i kernel
kernel-utils-2.4-8.37
kernel-2.4.21-4.EL
kernel-source-2.4.21-4.EL
kernel-smp-2.4.21-4.EL
kernel-pcmcia-cs-3.1.31-13
[root@leda root]#

Grepping the up2date for kernel packages displays the following:-

#grep -i kernel /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date
pkgSkipList=kernel*;
pkgsToInstallNotUpdate=kernel;kernel-modules;
removeSkipList=kernel*;

So if I wanted to update the kernel packages, how would I update it without losing the existing kernel?

[Stuart Browne]

up2date -uf kernel-utils kernel-source kernel-smp kernel kernel-pcmcia-cs

[skt_skt]

So if I wanted to update the kernel packages, how would I update it without losing the existing kernel?

upadate -ivh kernl-pkg-name do the package installation and update the /etc/grub.conf(link).

So editing the /boot/grub/brub.conf and pointing to the right/required kernel is what you have to to for that.