RHN Update - Possible to DownRev a Package?

[Alzhy]

I'm in the process of trying out RHN Update from the RHN Network (we have active subscriptions of course). It seems what it does is suggest the latest and greatest versions -- but it does not seem to allow me to downrev a package beffore the upgrade/patching.

For instance: the latest RHN update gives me kernel 2.6.18-164.15.1.el5. But we're not ready for this kernel yet as thre is no Oracle ASMLib and OCFS2 package yet for this kernel.

All I can do for now is essentially customise the update so it skips this update and just do manually the kernel update for the lower kernel version which is 2.6.18.164.11.1.el5.

Is there a way of customizing on RHN to downrev packages?

Also downlaoding the rhn-update tar bundle seems to be disabled already so one cannot just simply download the packages and rpm them manually.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

You can with RHN exclude kernel from updates. Any updates requiring the kernel will be excluded as well.

If the kernel is already installed, even if its running you can:

1) rpm -Uvh old kernel - update to the old
2) rpm -e installed kernel followed by rpm -ivh the kernel you want in production.

You are better off with yum making these calculations if you run RHEL 5.x. You can even use centos yum for 4.x and download your own repository, mimicked the RH Satellite Server.

If your company has the money Satellite server might provide you a bit more flexibility here. I think the product is over priced, and the functionality can be handled with some scripts and the command line.

SEP