Linux OS Patches

[Nobody's Hero]

Ok, I am still having some problems understanding this. I have a dual E800 running RH9 using smp kernel. I regestered the system on the RH network, used up2date. All I see are possible packages to pull down, like cdrecord, afio..etc..etc. What does a system patch look like in the Linux world. Isnt there a depot of general RH9 patches I can pull down? I really dont understand this but I am trying real hard. I dont know how to pull down a bug fix....HHHEEELLLPPP...


RPM

[Steven Mertens · Accepted solution]

hi,

You cant compare it like patches on HPUX
for example.
Most off the time, the errata rpms on
RHN are new packages that fixes some things.
For cdrecord it means that a totally new release of cdrecord will be installed, the older packages will be removed.

With the up2date tool you can pull those
new packages on to your system.

If you want to update your system with all
the latest available packages do up2date -u.
For only one packages do up2date cdrecord for example.

see also man up2date.

rgds.

Steven

[Steven E. Protter]

Red Hat Enterprise has a whole new set of cd's which can update and replace any binary file on the system.

What red hat does, different than say HP is they provice replacement binaries.

If sendmail 8.12.1 is installed on your system and a fix is created, up2date will download sendmail 8.12.2 and those binaries will install right over the old one.

Configuration files are left alone.

Every three months for the ES Red Hat releases new cd's which include new binaries and is considred a major release.

SEP

[dirk dierickx]

Linux distributions don't work with the concept of patches you come to know from HP, or in the Windows world.
What redhat or any other linux distro does is just release an updated version of the package that came with it originaly.
So when you say that with up2date you can see a lot of packages waiting for download, basicly those are all bugfixes/securityfixes/enhancements and could be considered 'patches' to fix faults in the default installation.
You can check the version of the software when you look at the package, it will be named something like this: -..rpm now you can check the version numbers between packages to determine which is the newer version. (normally up2date will figure this out for you though, just let it download and install the packages and you should be fine)